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JESUS THE MAN 


AN HISTORICAL STUDY 


By 
VICTOR E. HARLOW, M. A. 


HARLOW PUBLISHING CO. 
OKLAHOMA CITY 
1924 


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CONTENTS 


ReEEN TRODUCTION iN fee dece ieee eat cree te 1 
II. THE BEGINNING—JOHN THE BAPTIZER .. 15 
PI ANE DAPTISMM seem eo ee 25 
IV. THE VISION AND THE AWAKENING.............. 32 
V. ANNOUNCING THE KINGDOM IN GALILEE .. 38 
VI. CONFLICT WITH THE PHARISEBS.................. 52 

VII. THE GREAT DISCOURSES AT CAPERNAUM— 
HE GEAVES ;CAPERNAUM GO ee 69 

VIII. At NAZARETH — THE TouR THROUGH 
GAD TURE iy Wnty a emi Eman Oh get 2) 87 
DXOROENDING OF THE | DWELVEM an: 97 

X. HEROD SEEKS HIS ARREST—EXILE FROM 
TP BROD St LO MENIONS yes wae ore un een 103 

XI. CAESAREA PHILIPPI—THE TWELVE REC- 

OGNIZE JESUS AS THE MESSIAH — HE 
DETERMINES TO GO TO JERUSALEM............ 122 
AII. THE MARCH TO JERUSALEM ...W0002............. 136 
XIII. THE MESSIANIC ENTRY TO JERUSALEM. ....157 
XIV. Ht TAKES POSSESSION OF THE TEMPLE ....163 

XV. THE ARGUMENT IN THE ‘TEMPLE—THE 
AUTHORITIES MEURIO MPH] gaan uth 174 

XVI. “WHEN SHALL THESE THINGS BE, AND 
WHAT SHALL, BEVTHE (OIGN 22) 191 

XVII. THE SUPPER AT BETHANY AND THE BE- 
PRAY A Tiare it cegeti Cte me eR TY 202 
XVIII. THe ARREST AND THE INQUISITION ........ 215 


XIX. THE TRIAL BEFORE THE SANHEDRIN AND 
THE) CONVICTION Foe iiru ite perenne ae 228 

XX. THE HEARING AND ACQUITTAL BEFORE 
PILATE—THE HEARING BEFORE HEROD— 
DHS } CONDEMNATION | aes ace eee eae 232, 


UT ML Bi COR UCTELXRION Wits nce ie a eee eae ee 248 


JESUS THE MAN 


- Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
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Jesus The Man 


INTRODUCTION 


Jesus of Nazareth is not merely the object of rev- 
erence of the greatest religion in the world; he is 
also a figure of universal history. His activities, 
it is true, were confined to a small area and involved 
in immediate contact only a comparatively limited 
number of people, but they were important enough 
to win for him a paragraph in the pages of the 
greatest of Roman historians. Tacitus in a passage 
the authenticity of which is beyond question, con- 
firms the historicity and the importance of this great 
Jew. ‘‘Auctor nominis ews, Christus, Tiberio wm- 
peritante, per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum sup- 
plicio affectus erat.’” 

If there were no Christian records whatever, we 
should still be informed that a man called Christus 
lived in Judea in the days of Tiberius the Emperor; 
that he did something of sufficient importance to 
eall him to the attention of the governor of that 
province; and that he was put to death at the order 
of that governor, Pontius Pilate. This in itself is 
real accomplishment; to rise out of the oblivion 
which enshrouds the millions of his contemporaries 


tAnnal. XV, 44. 
[1] 


2 JESUS THE MAN 


and achieve the immortality of these few lines 
makes him one of the few remarkable men of his 
time, even if the religion built about his personality 
and his life and death had not enshrined him in the 
souls of ten thousand millions since then. 
Hundreds of studies of the life of this man have 
been made, many of them by the greatest minds of 
our race. Such studies, for the most part,—it is 
perhaps justifiable to say almost exclusively,—have 
had for their dominant motive a religious in- 
terest. Considering the supreme place in the relig- 
ious consciousness of our race which is occupied by 
the theology constructed around him, this is neither 
strange nor unjustified. Yet such studies do not ex- 
haust the subject. As an historical personage he 
is also a strictly historical problem. It is entirely 
reasonable for the pure historian, starting from that 
statement of Tacitus, to inquire what manner of 
man was this, and what deeds did he perform which 
caused Pontius Pilate to inflict upon him the ex- 
treme penalty; and to make that inquiry entirely 
apart from any theological consideration whatever. 
Such inquiry, however, need not be contradictory 
to any sound theology. The day of the Docetists is 
past. Those who accept Jesus as very God also look 
upon him as very man, who lived a truly human life. 
Leaving the divine side to the theologians, it is 
proper and reasonable for the historian, out of such 
materials as are available, to attempt to construct 
as far as may be done, the actual human life of this 
great man; not merely a life such as will fit snugly 


INTRODUCTION a 


into the theological molds later provided for it by 
the reflections of pious men, but the vivid, energetic, 
vital life which was seen by his contemporaries and 
which broke the narrow confines of his race and 
locality to find a place in the record of the great 
Roman Empire. The genuineness and the import- 
ance of the religious interest cannot be overlooked, 
but it does not exclude, it merely enhances, the his- 
torical interest in this strictly human and historical 
problem. 
’ This, then, has been the motive for the succeeding 
pages; to reproduce so far ag it is possible, in form 
intelligible to the reader of our time, the real phys- 
ical and mental life of the man Jesus, who actually 
walked and talked with men, as they saw him and 
heard him and as we would see him and hear him 
and understand him could we be translated into that 
far-off time and race. We aspire to see him as did 
those who lived with him, who when he was living 
saw him as a remarkable, an extraordinary man 
with an extraordinary message, but nevertheless 
truly asaman. It is by no means necessary to as- 
sume that such human life exhausted the meaning of 
the life of Jesus, but whatever there was in it over 
and beyond the human factors we leave to those 
skilled in such investigations. We retain only the 
humbler yet absorbingly interesting problem of the 
purely human life, physical, intellectual and emo- 
tional, of one than whom no more truly heroie char- 
acter has walked this earth, of Jesus the man. 

The materials for such an attempt are more fully 


eh ER 


aes these studies have any first thy ) 


4. Poy. JESUS THE MAn 


Se | 


* available now than ever before. The results at pains- 
taking investigation by scholars of, two continents 
for more than half a century have changed the whole 
outlook on the problem of Jesus. The veil which has 
hidden the thoughts and motives. of the J oyeyp 









most as fully as into those of any. ‘ie 
history. This new development and* “arepr 
derstanding have rendered obsolescent “if ne 
lete those mafty fine lives of Jesus ci 0 
days and from other viewpoints and justify an at- 
tempt at a fresh delineation of this. remarkable char- 
acter, in accord with the knowledge of his time and 
his race which has been acquired dugingg the past 
half century. 

Another factor has contributed to the dagiaien to 
attempt to retrace this oft traveled road. All the 
studies of the life of Jesus made haratenee: have 
been made by.theologians and professional seh« 10] 
men who were largely segregated from the ° prac ical 
interests of life. Such men have produced. studies 
‘very valuable from the theological or tl : 
standpoint, but with decided limitatior 
purely historical standpoint. Few of th 










INTRODUCTION 5 


litical and governmental. Heconomic and business 
factors were not lacking and the whole story is full 
of elements which seem to have escaped the atten- 
tion of the very learned men whose intentness upon 
the ideal and spiritual in Jesus has blinded them to 
many things of the highest interest to the more prac- 
tical and everyday mind of the average individual. 
A study which attempts to give due emphasis to 
these more homely and human elements of the story 
should be at once more accurate histori¢ally and 
more illuminating to those who would like to picture 
the wonderful career as nearly as possible. as it 


would have looked to one who’ saw it develop. An 


attempt at such a study by one who has. carried 


through an active business and political life an ab- | 


sorbing interest in the historical side of this most 
important episode in the history of our race ought 
at least to have the value of making a suggestion to 
some more gifted and more fully experienced man 
who will take up the task and perform it as it should 
be performed. 


The materials for such a study are Ponfined! tithe 


in comparatively narrow compass. With but few. 


exceptions they are contained in that aggregation 
of books of varied authorship and date of compo- 


sition which has been compiled under the name New. . 
Sp 

Testament. The direct references to J esus, ‘contem=*,... ° 

poraneous or nearly so, outside of these books: ‘are 


limited to the nEe ee from Tacitus ae 3 


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6 JESUS THE MAN 


referred to, to two passages in Josephus, one of 
which is generally admitted to be a later insertion 
and not a part of the original text of that historian, 
and some references in the writings of the early 
churchmen, most of which are preserved for us in 
the writings of Eusebius. Of all this material four 
books—those generally designated as the four gos- 
pels—contain material directly biographical. All 
the other sources, including the other books of the 
New Testament, are merely confirmatory or explan- 
atory. In view of the wonderful results secured in 
explorations and excavations in the various parts of 
the Orient where ancient manuscripts from time to 
time have been discovered, the hope has persisted 
that somewhere perhaps a new source might be un- 
covered which would shed new light upon this re- 
markable story, but the passage of years has seen 
the fulfillment of this hope grow less and less prob- 
able. It now seems unlikely that there have ever 
been more ample authentic literary records cover- 
ing this period than are now available to us. 
Consequently any attempt at reconstruction of an 
historic Jesus must be made with the same primary 
material which has been so often worked and re- 
worked. The books known by the names of the gos- 
pels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John 
must still be the source from which we must draw 
any such construction. Such other crumbs of in- 
formation as may be available may be used to eluci- 
date this story, but in its particulars as in its broad 
outlines it must depend upon these writings. 


INTRODUCTION ‘4 


These books in the last century have been sub- 
jected to a most intense scrutiny. The result of this 
penetrating investigation by scholars of many lands 
has been a body of definitely recognized and admit- 
ted facts to which the older students of the life of 
Jesus, even had they been able to approach the prob- 
lem as a strictly historic one, had no access. Any 
present attempt must as a necessary preliminary 
take full cognizance of the conclusions which are now 
generally accepted among competent students of 
these books. 

The most casual observation of the many different 
lives of Jesus impresses one with the sincerity of 
their authors but at the same time with the shadowy 
and contradictory character of the individual por- 
trayed through them,—a character which has even 
given rise to serious doubts as to whether any such 
individual ever existed. Comparatively little reflec- 
tion upon the results of modern scholarship as re- 
gards the gospels is necessary to make the reason 
for this clear. It is now generally admitted that 
the gospels contain two stories of Jesus; stories not 
merely fundamentally different, not merely portray- 
ing two men of absolutely different characteristics, 
two lives with largely different incidents, but two 
stories which are to a very considerable extent con- 
tradictory. The first three gospels tell the same story 
with comparatively slight variations; the fourth 
gospel portrays a being utterly different from him 
whose brief career is chronicled by Matthew, Mark 
and Luk+ 


S JESUS THE Man 


The shadowy, contradictory figure before men- 
tioned is the result of an attempt to portray a being 
fulfilling the requirements of both of these stories. 
The four gospels come to us on an equal basis; 
they were included in the same collection by the great 
Catholic fathers who selected the books which make 
up our New Testament, and have been handed down 
to us with equal authority. Consequently the biog- 
raphers of Jesus have felt compelled to give them 
equal weight, to include in any portrayal of the great 
Nazarene all the features characteristic of both these 
two divergent chronicles. That the result has been 
contradictory and unconvincing is no cause for sur- 
prise. 

Modern scholarship has indicated a way out of 
this difficulty. It has been made clear that the 
thoughtful student of Jesus can accept one of these 
portrayals; that it is not intellectually necessary to 
attempt to accept both with their contradictory char- 
acter. 

The general conclusion of this scholarship can be 
briefly stated here; it is not necessary to go into de- 
tails or to give the reasons for this conclusion, for 
there are numerous books dealing with the subject 
in detail. 

The first three gospels were written not much if 
any later than 75 A. D. Of these the earliest is the 
gospel according to Mark, written almost certainly 
by the man whose name it bears, who secured his 
data chiefly from Peter and Paul. Parts of his story 
probably were based upon his own experience and 


INTRODUCTION 9 


observation, but in the main it is the story which was 
told in various parts of Asia and Italy by Peter. The 
gospels of Matthew and Luke are based upon that of 
Mark, with whose story they have consolidated a 
quantity of other material of uncertain origin; there 
is strong reason to believe that it consisted of an- 
other document or documents which contained a col- 
lection or collections of the sayings of Jesus, with 
perhaps a small amount of narrative included, but 
entirely devoid of chronological arrangement. In 
consolidating this material the writers of both the 
gospels, Luke in particular, have taken the liberty 
of rearranging the chronological order of Mark to 
conform with their own later ideas of what prob- 
ably occurred. Neither Luke, who was undoubtedly 
the Greek physician of that name who accompanied 
Paul for a long time, nor the author of Matthew, who 
is unidentified but was probably also a Greek, had 
first-hand knowledge of the facts which they chron- 
icled, and apparently they had little if any first 
hand knowledge from men who actually accom- 
panied Jesus in his experience, other than that con- 
tained in Mark. 

The gospel of Matthew probably takes its name 
from the fact that it is a consolidation of the gospel 
by Mark with a book written in Hebrew by Matthew, 
one of the twelve, which we know to have been a col- 
lection of the sayings of Jesus. The production of 
both Matthew and Luke was a literary task; both re- 
veal clearly the particular phases which their prob- 
lem took, the attempts to solve their difficulties as 


10 JESUS THE Man 


they appeared; the seams, so to speak, show clearly 
where the various parts are patched together. Par- 
ticularly is this true of Luke, who treated the orig- 
inal story as told by Mark with far greater freedom 
than did the author of Matthew. 

These three gospels show the developing theolog- 
ical interest very clearly. In Mark this interest is 
comparatively small; the story as told by him is a 
clear, straightforward human story, of an extra- 
ordinary man, the memory of whose personality has 
already begun to be touched with superhuman char- 
acteristics, but who is nevertheless a man. These 
superhuman characteristics are more prominent in 
Matthew and still more so in Luke, showing the 
increasing interest in the theological problems de- 
veloped by continued reflection and the consequent 
growing haziness as to the details of the story itself, 
yet still clearly portraying the genuine experience of 
aman. The essential elements of the story, though 
dislocated in many particulars, remain the same in 
the gospels according to Matthew and to Luke as in 
Mark; for all their variations, Matthew, Mark and 
Luke tell one and the same story of one and the same 
man. 

When, however, we come to the gospel according 
to John we find an entirely different being. This 
gospel is the production of some Christian theolog- 
ian who was at the same time a Greek Neo-Platonist 
and who lived somewhere in Asia, probably at 
Eiphesus, after the theology of Paul had been de- 
veloped to its full conclusion. Its thought both phil- 


INTRODUCTION Vn 


osophic and theological is that of a period many 
years, at least as much as fifty, probably as much as 
a hundred, later than the period when the other three 
gospels were written. The vigorous, virile, power- 
ful human personality which shines through the 
pages of Mark in particular, and in less degree 
through those of Matthew and Luke, has changed in- 
to another and utterly different being; he has lost 
his human characteristics and has become the an- 
swer to a problem of Greek philosophy. The Jesus of 
Mark is a man of action; a man of intensely human 
emotions; a man who grows angry; who hurls de- 
fiance and contempt into the teeth of his enemies; a 
man of iron will and determination who decides what 
he will do and asserts that he will do it in the face of 
the gates of Hell. The Jesus of John is the Logos of 
a philosophic sect; a being whose conscious memory 
transcends all human limitations and reaches back 
to the time when He created the world and all that 
is therein; whose dominant characteristic is a di- 
vine love which leaves in him no room for any of 
the powerful human characteristics which were so 
prominent in the man described by the first three 
gospels. The fourth gospel in its nature, its form 
and its content is an exemplification of its purpose, 
frankly stated in it—‘‘that ye might believe that 
Jesus is the Anointed, the Son of God.’’ In other 
words, it is a book written to maintain the thesis of 
the deity of Jesus. The first three books are his- 
torical books touched with theology; the fourth is 
a theological treatise in historical form. 


12 JESUS THE MAN 


The gospel according to John is saturated with 
the finest spirit of Christianity. Its unknown author, 
—scholars are practically agreed that he was not the 
Apostle John,—was a great religious genius and has 
set his seal forever upon the thought and aspiration 
of the Christian world. Christians of all ages have 
turned toward this book more than to any other as 
the source and expression of the consolation and the 
firm hope which are characteristic of the faith which 
has built itself about the personality and the name of 
Jesus of Nazareth. This is now true as it has been 
true for nearly eighteen hundred years; most of the 
dogmas, most of the theology of the many varied 
forms of the Christian faith are based upon this 
book. 

Yet the fact remains that historically it is not 
possible to accept this book as the true story cf the 
human life of Jesus and at the time accept the 
story as told by the first three gospels. The com- 
mon explanation that both stories are true, that they 
merely look at the problem from different angles, 
cannot stand. While they contain many of the same 
incidents, the stories are essentially different and 
contradictory. It is possible to reconstruct a story 
according to the gospel of John and it is possible to 
construct one according to the other three gospels; 
but to develop an intelligible sequence of events 
which shall satisfy at one and the same time these 
two divergent records never has been possible. 

Anyone who attempts such a reconstruction must 
make his choice. This book is based upon such a 


INTRODUCTION ES" 


decision. The gospel according to John will con- 
tinue to appeal more intensely to everyone whose 
interest is chiefly theological. It is a book written 
by a theologian, for theologians. The historian, 
however, naturally turns to the book which is first 
of all and almost exclusively a history, the gospel ac- 
cording to Mark, and its offspring, the gospels ac- 
cording to Matthew and Luke. 

This book, then, is frankly an Prearini to recon- 
struct the life of Jesus upon the model first of Mark, 
consolidating with it the other material contained 
in Matthew and in Luke. It is based upon the con- 
viction that the gospel according to John was writ- 
ten long afterwards, its historical information 
drawn almost exclusively from these and in no 
point to be considered as authoritative when it 
contradicts the Marcan narrative. In a few in- 
stances, particularly in the narration of the events 
of the last twenty-four hours of Jesus’ life, there are 
touches in the gospel according to John which indi- 
cate the possibility that its author may have had ac- 
cess to an original source. These instances give 
information not contained in the other gospels, 
which is not contradictory to them, but which can 
well be considered as supplementary to them. This 
material it is true is commingled with other material 
which is directly contradictory to the synoptic story 
and it may be as inaccurate as this other material, 
but it is sufficiently illuminating if true that the pos- 
sibility of its truth has been adopted. All other 
sources approximately contemporary making refer- 


14 JESUS THE MAN 


ences to Jesus,—Josephus, the Book of Acts, lgna- 
tius, Kusebius,—have been used for what they are 
worth as throwing light upon the story, but the nar- 
rative remains after all essentially the story told by 
John Mark, the cousin of Joses who was surnamed 
Barnabas, the companion of Peter and of Paul, who 
dwelt in Jerusalem during those stirring days and 
who probably himself saw many of the events of that 
wonderful and fatal last week. 


CHAPTER I. 


Tue Brcinninc—JoHN THE Baptizer. 


Sometime late in the year 28 or early in the year 
29 of our era a strange figure appeared in the hill 
country of eastern Judea. A man who was called 
Jochanan, the equivalent of our English ‘‘John,”’ 
robed in garments of camel’s hair, girded with leath- 
ern girdle, a typical inhabitant of the wilderness, be- 
gan to proclaim to the Jewish inhabitants of that 
rugged region an announcement to them most sig- 
nificant and stirring. 

‘*Repent,’’ said he, ‘*for the Kingdom of Heaven 
is at hand.”’ 

Never was spoken message more tremendous in 
its effect. The inhabitants of the hill country flock- 
ed around him. By word of mouth this—to us— 


*Luke 3:1-2. This is the only date connected with the life of 
Jesus which can be determined with any degree of accuracy. 
The reign of Tiberius Caesar began on August 19, A. D. 14. Con- 
sequently its fifteenth year began August 19, A. D. 28 and ended 
August 18, A. D. 29. Those who desire to retain the stories of the 
miraculous birth and annunciations (Matt. 1:18-2:23; Luke 1:5- 
2:52) and attempt to reconcile the chronology of tthese two sec- 
tions with the careful statement of Luke 3:1-2, count the reign 
of Tiberius as beginning two years earlier when he practically 
assumed joint responsibility with Augustus, making the appear- 
ance of John in 26 or 27. This rather strained conclusion, how- 
ever, fails to eliminate the contradictions, and is unnecessary 
when it is recognized that the entire story of Matthew 1 is un- 
historical, the product of later reflection on the relation be- 
tween Jesus and the prophecies believed to be essential in the 
conception of the Messiah. See note 3, page 26. 

[15] 


16 JESUS THE Man 


strange message passed swiftly from the hills of the 
Judean wilderness to Jerusalem and to all parts of 
Judea and the regions about the Jordan until multi- 
tudes surrounded the anchorite, hanging upon the 
burning words which fell from his lips, and pressing 
upon one another to participate in the rite which 
gave him the peculiar name by which he was known, 
—‘‘ John the Baptizer.’” 

But if strange to us, his message was full of mean- 
ing to those who came to hear him. In them was not 
the least uncertainty as to what he meant. The Mes- 
sianic hope of the Jews, their expectation that a spe- 
cial kingdom of God would come upon the earth, to 
be composed of the chosen and worthy of the Jewish 
nation, was at that time in the full vigor of its grasp 
upon the people whom it was later to destroy.’ This 
wonderful expectation enabled the Jews, proud and 
imperious of spirit and inspired by the memory of 
a glorious history, in the face of most contradic- 
tory circumstances to retain their racial pride and 
confidence that they were the especially chosen peo- 


*Matt. 3:1-6; Mark 1:4-6; Luke 3:1-4. 

"It is evident from the account of Josephus that the disturb- 
ances which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus 
had their root in the Messianic expectation, Josephus himself 
nowhere specifically makes such a statement, but numerous hints 
of the general attitude of the leaders in sedition appear, and 
indicate that Josephus was rather concealing the Messianic ten- 
dencies of his people, which when he wrote had by no means 
died out and would if revealed to the authorities at Rome, sub- 
ject the Jews to further persecution. See, for example, Wars II, 
xiii, 3-5 and the continuous references to the Zealots all through 
the story of the disorders in Jerusalem. See also note 8 to 
Chapter VI, page 70. 


Tuer BEGINNING 17 


ple of the Most High. At that time they had com- 
pletely lost their once proud national position. With 
the passing of the Maccabean dynasty and follow- 
ing their conquest by Pompey, they had become the 
helpless subjects of Rome. Oppressed, humiliated, 
almost stripped of standing among the nations of 
the earth, deprived of national lberty, no. longer 
ruled by their own princes, but subject to the crea- 
tures of the far-away Roman government who ming- 
led with a deep contempt a fear which made them 
more harsh and oppressive than was even the Roman 
practice, they nevertheless maintained a firm hope 
and confidence that they were still God’s chosen peo- 
ple and that ultimately they would triumph over 
their oppressors through Him. 

The expectation that one of the line of David 
would restore the Kingdom to the Jews had been 
common among them for centuries.’ This belief was 
a universal racial heritage and was at least as old 
as the days of the conquest and destruction of the 
nation by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, 
We have certain knowledge that for almost two hun- 
dred years’ it had been definite in form, persistent 
through every fresh humiliation, growing stronger 
as the national difficulties grew greater and the 


‘See, for example, Isaiah 11:1-12; written almost 700 years 
before. Similar specimen references occur in the succeeding 
notes; they are merely samples of what occurs abundantly 
through all the prophets. 


‘That is, since the days of Antiochus Epiphanes (B. C. 17%5- 
164). The book of Daniel, which was written during this period, 
contains the basis and much of the detail of the later conception. 


18 JESUS THE MAN 


probability of recovery of their former great posi- 
tion through human instrumentalities grew less. It 
was the unquenchable hope of a conquered and op- 
pressed people, who nevertheless would not give up 
their national pride and their confidence in their 
own God. But from the days of the writer of the 
Book of Daniel, almost. two hundred years before 
our era, the Jewish people had been looking forward 
with an even more definite expectation to a time 
when their oppression and inferiority and misfor- 
tune would be wiped out in a cataclysmal event 
which would destroy out of the world all the oppres- 
sors, all the evil doers, all those who deprived Israel 
of his heritage.” In that Great Day of the Lord, won- 
derful and terrible, only the pious, the obedient to 
the Law, the poor in spirit, those who were fit to be 
participants in a kingdom ruled by the direct pres- 
ence of God, those who should be found ‘‘written in 
the book’’,’ would be able to endure and to partici- 
pate in the Golden Age which would follow; all 
others would go into everlasting punishment or be 
totally destroyed. This glorious new kingdom of 
Israel was to be once more the visible favorite of 
God; it was to be inaugurated by the coming on 
the clouds of heaven of His own anointed representa- 
tive, who was to judge it, admit the just into it, and 


Tsaiah 13:6-138; 16:4,5; 34:1-4. 
Isaiah 35:5-10; Daniel 12:1. ‘Isaiah 1, 27-28; 3:9, 11. 


‘Observe the intense feeling and the confident hope in Isaiah 
14 :1-27. 


THe BEGINNING 19 


rule over it;’ the Jews dispersed throughout all the 
earth would again be gathered into Palestine;” all 
the nations of the earth were to be subordinate to 
the Jews, again visibly the chosen nation of God, 
and would come to worship in his holy mount, Jeru- 
salem.” All misfortune, all sickness, all suffering, 
all hardship, all hunger and thirst, would be done 
away. The desert was to blossom as a rose.” All 
the land of Palestine was to be fruitful beyond imag- 
ination. The dead should rise to participate accord- 
ing to their fitness, whether for good or for evil.’”” 
Old age and death would be no more.” 

The Jewish masses had no doubt that all this was 
to come to pass; the only uncertainty was that the 
time when this wonderful change should occur was 
still mysterious. Most of the prophets who were spe- 
cific in their promise were entirely indefinite as to 
the time; Daniel, it is true, spoke with precision of 
times and seasons, but in mysterious terms, the 
meaning of which the people were unable to unravel, 
and which even the wisdom of the scribes could not 
discern. At some time this much hoped-for event 
would occur, but the time was hidden.” 


Msaiah 16:5; 42:1-9; Daniel 7:13, 14. 


N“Tsaqiah 11:11-12. 2Tsaiah 14:1-2. 
BYsaiah 2:2-4. M4Isaiah 35:1-2. 
SDaniel 12:2. Isaiah 25:8, 


“Daniel 9:22-27; 12:7-13. 


*The most accurate statement of the details of the Messianic 
hope is presented in Section 29 of Schuerer’s monumental work. 
(The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ). Real com- 


oe 


20 JESUS THE MAN 


This was the general attitude of mind of the peo- 
ple of that thickly populated corner of the earth. 
Learned and ignorant alike, the poor and the rich, 
the great and the humble, all alike were familiar 
with this hope. Most of them shared it, but whether 
believed or not, it was a common element in the 
mentality of all the people, a universal expectation in 
which all were participants. As all felt the same hu- 
miliation, all kept the same ultimate trust in God, 
all in some degree held to this traditional form of 
the racial hope. : 

It is consequently not to be wondered at that when 
suddenly, without warning, the striking and solitary 
figure of John appeared, and speaking with decis- 
ion and full assurance proclaimed that delay was 
past, the times were fulfilled, and this great and 
longed-for day was about to arrive, people dropped 
their ordinary occupations and crowded around him 
to listen to that which more than anything else in 
the world they desired to hear. Vigorous, incisive, 
were the words of the wilderness preacher; pictur- 
esque, as was the strange garb which to the minds of 
these people, saturated with the memory of their an- 
cient records, recalled the magnificent, far-off fig- 
ure of the greatest of all the prophets of their race, 


prehension of it, however, is most readily secured from reading 
the prophecies in the Old Testament, especially Isaiah and Daniel, 
remembering that all those references to a glorious yet terrible 
future event were believed by the Jewish people in the reign of 
Tiberius to refer to a time and a man certain to come. The re- 
cently recovered book of Enoch also throws much light upon the 
Messianic ideas of the time of Jesus and immediately before. 


Tue BEGINNING 21 


—Hlijah, the Tishbite, who also dwelt in the wilder- 
ness, who also was clothed in a garment of hair, and 
wore.a leathern girdle. ” 

‘‘Change your thoughts,’’—for that is the mean- 
ing of the Greek word which the churchmen of later 
centuries have translated ‘‘repent,’’—‘‘ Change your 
thoughts, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn 
very near. Bring forth the fruits of a changed 
heart. For the axe les at the root of every tree; 
every tree therefore that brings not forth good fruit 
shall be cut down and east into the fire.’’ That is 
to say, the new Kingdom ruled by God’s own pres- 
ence is about to appear, and in this Kingdom only 
those will participate who have abandoned their old 
sinful practices and have made their lives and per- 
sonalities sufficiently valuable to be a desirable part 
of it. All others will be destroyed. 

The idea was familiar to the people who in in- 
creasing numbers crowded to hear him. The great 
and terrible Day of the Lord was at hand. The be- 
lief in the coming Kingdom was not all joy; it car- 
ried with it a great fear. That the bad would be de- 
stroyed and only the good be saved was as familiar 
to them as the rest of the conception. They believed 
John’s convincing words, and the fear and the terror 
of that awful Day fell upon them. ‘‘What then shall 
we do?’’ they eried. 

Simple was his answer; simple yet most profound. 
The moral teaching which has since come to domin- 


*TI Kings 1:7-8. The marginal translation is “a man with 
a garment of hair’. 


yy Jesus THE Man 


ate the world was foreshadowed in it. He gave these 
terrified people a code of morals suitable for such a 
time, for those who believed they stood almost in 
the immediate presence of God and could be saved 
from His destruction only by being fit to live in such 
a presence. He said to them:” 

“He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that 
hath none; and ‘he that hath food let him do likewise.” 
And there came also publicans to be baptized, and they 
said uuto him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said 
unto them, “Extort no more than that which is appointed 
you.” And soldiers also asked ‘him, saying, “And we, 
what must we do?” And he said unto them, “Extort from 


no man by violence, neither accuse any one falsely; and 
be content with your wages.” 


The disturbance was not limited to the ignorant 
and lowly. The most learned, the most prominent 
of the nation, came with the multitude to hear the 
welcome announcement of John and to participate 
in his baptism. But the aristocrats and lawyers 
from Jerusalem received precisely the same type of 
warning as did the humble peasant and mountaineer. 
A new conception he presented to them. They too 
believed in the coming of the Kingdom, but they be- 
lieved that because of their racial inheritance they 
would necessarily be partakers in this new King- 
dom of God which was to be prepared especially 
for the Jews. But John said to them ‘‘Bring forth 
fruits worthy of your change of heart, and think not 
to say to yourselves ‘We are Abraham’s children,’ 


Luke 3:11-14. For the probable origin of the idea, see Isaiah 
33 :14-16. 


Tuer BEGINNING fay 


for that avails you nothing; for God ig able from 
these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Only 
those trees that bring forth good fruit shall escape 
the fire.’”” 

It is difficult for us, with almost two thousand 
years between us and that time, members of a race 
in circumstances unutterably different, with nothing 
in us corresponding to the wild hope which possessed 
these people, to understand the excitement which 
the appearance of John evoked. Apparently every- 
body in that section of Palestine” dropped their busi- 
ness and went to hear him and to participate in the 
baptism which he gave as an evidence that they had 
put sin behind them, that they were clean in heart 
and purified in body, and were prepared for mem- 
bership in this coming Kingdom.” 

How long the excitement continued we do not 
know. Considering the inflammatory mental con- 
dition of these people, it could take only a short 
time for it to reach fever heat. Certain it is that 
as John moved up and down the Jordan, preaching 
and baptizing at this place and at that, from the 
wilderness near the Dead Sea on the south to Beth- 


™~Matthew 3:7-10. 
Matt 3:5; Mark 1:5; 


2=Hor explanation of the meaning of the rite, see Josephus 
Antiq. XVIII, v. 2. He says that he “was a good man, and com- 
manded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness to- 
wards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to bap- 
tism; for that the washing would be acceptable to him, if they 
made use of it, not in order to the putting away of some sins, 
but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul 
was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness.” 


24. JESUS THE Man 


ebara across the river in Perea far to the north, 
the echoes of the excitement he created ran through 
Palestine from one end to the other. The people 
were convinced that in truth the times spoken of by 
Daniel were ended and the great and terrible Day 
of the Lord was at hand, and crowded about him 
from all directions. 

John made no claim of.authority for himself. The 
reasons by which he supported his claim that the 
time was fulfilled have been lost to us; evidently 
they were convincing to his hearers, but he did not 
base that claim upon any special personal power or 
capacity. He even spoke in cryptic fashion of one 
who should succeed him, beside whom he was noth- 
ing, ‘‘whose shoes I am not worthy to bear,’’ who 
should substitute for his symbolic water baptism a 
baptism of divine power.” Later reflection caused 
men to see in this majestic, mysterious, tragic figure 
the fulfillment of the words of Isaiah, ‘‘The voice of 
one erying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way 
of the Lord.’™” 


“Matt 3:11; Mark 1:7-8; Luke 3:15-17. 
*Tsaiah 40:3. 


CHAPTER II. 


Tar BAprism 


At the height of this excitement, from Nazareth of 
Galilee came Jesus, the son of Joseph, joining in 
the great procession of true Israelites who believed 
the message, who desired to participate in the joy 
of this coming Kingdom, and to evidence their de- 
termination and their fitness by partaking of John’s 
baptism in the Jordan. 

Later, when this young man had come to be looked 
upon by hosts of devoted followers as the Messiah, 
and even as the personification of God himself, leg- 
end busied itself much about the events of his life 
prior to his meeting with the great figure of John. 
These legends grew out of the attempts of his de- 
voted followers to visualize and to explain the 
strange relationship which they believed had existed 
between him and God. Some of them were the re- 
sult of attempts to explain little understood or mis- 
understood references in the language of Jesus him- 
self.’ Others followed the application of logical proc- 


"Greek Jesous (pronounced Yasous), transliteration of the 
Aramaic Yeshua. The Greek did not have the sh sound, and 
transliterated it by s, making the word Yasoua or Yasous. His 
Aramaic name,—that by which he was known in his lifetime,— 
was Yeshua bar (or ben, meaning son of) Yoseph. Yeshua was 
the equivalent of the older Hebrew Yoshua (Joshua), or still 
older Yehoshua, which meant “God of Salvation”. 


The idea of the miraculous conception, for example, no doubt 
[25] 


26 JESUS THE Man 


esses to the current conception of the Messiah, and 
were attempts to confine the personality of Jesus 
within the moulds of these fixed conceptions. Most 
of these legends are frankly impossible.” Many are so 
crude and coarse as to be revolting to the more re- 
fined sensibilities of our times. Very few of them 
have even remote connection with the facts, and 


originated in the frequent references of Jesus to God as his Father, 
later amplified by the tendency of the Greeks to attribute divine 
parentage to their heroic figures. 


*The birth in Bethlehem, and the visit of Joseph and Mary to 
that village, evidently unhistorical, are the outgrowth of a logical 
process as follows: Jesus was the Messiah; the Messiah must 
be born in Bethlehem; therefore Jesus must have been born in 
Bethlehem. Since the record showed that his parents lived 
at Nazareth, some explanation of the presence of Mary in Beth- 
lehem became necessary. The enrollment gave the only possible 
rational explanation, as the family had no known property or 
other interest to take them there. The chronological contradiction 
involved in placing the birth at the time of the enrollment, in 6-7 
A. D. and then stating that Jesus was about thirty years old in 
28-29 A. D., only twenty-two years later, seems to have escaped 
Luke just as the error of also placing the birth in the time of 
Herod, who died ten years before the enrollment, was overlooked 
by both Luke and Matthew. These legends are the most natural 
development conceivable. The early Christians were convinced 
that Jesus was the scriptural Messiah, and that consequently all 
the scriptures understood to apply to the Messiah must apply to 
Jesus. Showing that he did in fact fulfill all the Messianic proph- 
ecies was one of the most important methods of securing beliey- 
ers. Where the facts were apparently contradictory to the 
prophecies, some means must be found to eliminate the contra- 
diction, which, in their view, could only be apparent, not genuine. 
The preliminary stories of both Matthew and Luke were at- 
tempts at such elimination; as suggested, the writers were not 
aware that such attempt led them into even greater contradictions, 
of chronology. 

*The most unreasonable stories of the childhood and youth of 
Jesus were early excluded from the literature of the church but 
some of them are still extant in the several apocryphal gospels. 


THe Baprism 27 


only a very limited number of them have kept their 
place in Christian literature as a part of the accept- 
ed teaching of the church which has grown up about 
his personality. 

Outside of these legends and the crumbs of truth 
that may be contained in them, there are yet some 
facts about the personality of the man who now came 
to John which can be definitely ascertained from the 
authenticated story of his brief career. 

He was the son of Joseph and Mary of Nazareth,’ 
a village situated on the slopes of the hills to the 
northwest of the Plain of Esdraelon in Galilee. He 
was about thirty years old.” He, like his father be- 
fore him, was a carpenter, or a builder of the simple 
houses of that country. He had several brothers and 
sisters. His family was later believed and taught 
by his followers to have been descendants of the 
House of David. Of this we cannot be sure, as the 
genealogical evidence contained in the gospels is 
contradictory and insufficient, and some of his own 
statements lead to a contrary inference. It is quite 
possibly true, however, for as the development of 
his brothers, James and Jude, showed, it was a 


"Matt. 138:54-57; Mark 6:1, 4; Luke 4:16. 
®SLuke 3:23; Matthew 13:55. 


"Mark 6:3. In a country and a time when all occupations 
were simple and elemental, this fact has none of the economic 
and social significance attaching to a similar occupation in our 
time. 


‘Hor example, see Matthew 22:41-46, Mark 12:35-37, Luke 
20 :41-44. The inference is immediate that he was here prepar- 
ing a defense against possible objection to his Messianic claim 
on the ground that he was not the son of David. 


28 JESUS THE MAN 


family of strong capacity, which was not inherited 
by Jesus alone,’ and the tradition was still vivid and 
shared by members of his family some generations 
later.” He was an educated man, as education went 
in those days and among that people. That is, he 
read the classic language of his people, equivalent 
in our day to scholarship in the Greek and Latin 
classics ;" he was deeply learned in the law and the 
prophets of the sacred writings of his race. He 
was very familiar with the conditions and surround- 
ings of the common and poor people who made up 
the population of Galilee; but we have no definite 
knowledge of the financial status of his family. He 


*James later became the head of the Christian community at 
Jerusalem, and according to Josephus (Antiq. XX, ix, 1; Eusebius 
II, xxiii,) like Jesus, was arrested, condemned by the Sanhe- 
drin and put to death; conclusive evidence that he was an in- 
dividual of force and character as otherwise he could not so 
have aroused the antagonism of the Jewish leaders, He was 
called “the Just” by the ancients (Eusebius, II, i, 2. Hegesip- 
pus, quoted by Eusebius II, xxiii, 4-19) on account of his piety 
and many virtues, and has a place of his own in history. The 
authorship of the letters in the New Testament bearing the names 
of James and Jude has been disputed since the time of Eusebius, 
though probability supports their authenticity; but even if they 
should be considered apocryphal, the fact that their authors 
sought to give them standing by attributing them to James and 
Jude and that such assumption of authorship has secured their 
place in the Christian Canon, should be convincing evidence of 
the weight the two had among the early Christians and conse- 
quently of their exceptional ability and strength of character. 


*Husebius, Bk III, c. 19, 20, tells that the Emperor Domitian 
called before him the grandchildren of Jude, the brother of 
Jesus, who, on being asked whether they were descendants of 
David, admitted that they were. 


“Luke 4:16-20. The scriptures as read in the synagogue were 
written in Hebrew, which at that time was a dead language. 


Tue Baptism 29 


was not a member of the governing class or closely 
in touch with it; all during that short part of his 
life known to us he showed by his statements an un- 
familiarity with the more intimate habits and cus- 
toms of the ruling classes, as great as his familiarity 
with the experiences and motives of the common 
people of Galilee. But his appearance,” his bearing, 
his education, combined to set him apart from the 
common people with whom he had grown up and 
made it easy for them to recognize him later as a 
member of the teaching class, and to call him by the 
title which recognized that superiority. 


“There is no authentic portrait of Jesus, an entirely natural 
fact, as Jewish religious habit prevented such practice, and in 
his life he did not come into sufficiently prominent contact with 
Greeks or Romans to cause their artists to produce statuary 
preserving his physical appearance. Likewise there is no direct 
description of his personal appearance in the gospels or else- 
where in authentic documents. It is proper to infer, however, 
that he was of large and commanding presence, for the power 
of suggestion which he exercised is almost always connected 
with impressive physique. Also several incidents, notably his 
escape from the crowd at Nazareth, can best be understood by 
the assumption of great physical power. He lived in an age 
when leadership was almost invariably associated with excep- 
tional physical size and power; his march to Jerusalem at the 
head of the multitude would have been extremely unlikely had 
he not been a man whose appearance suited the part he was tak- 
ing. Had he not been personally attractive it is not probable 
that he could have held with him, in closest and most intimate 
contact, the twelve men who clung to him in the face of danger 
and failure, or the women who adhered so closely both in Galilee 
and Jerusalem. In thinking of his demeanor and appearance it is 
necessary to remember that they were such that after his death 
those who knew him most intimately found nothing incongruous 
in the conelusion that he was superhuman, a personage so great 
that he could not be held even by death itself. The conclusion 
is irresistible that he was a great, commanding, impressive figure. 


30 JESUS THE MAN 


He too was saturated with the Messianic concep- 
tion of his time. Tremendously gifted, exceedingly 
earnest, he had, no doubt, thought more vigorously 
and with more penetration than most others of his 
time, upon the characteristics of this strange hope 
of his race. It held him with absorbing interest, so 
great that it assumed control of his thought and pur- 
pose, to the practical exclusion of other matters. 
Naturally he was acquainted with all the literature 
of Messianism. With the Messianic psalms and the 
prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel especially he was 
familiar ; likewise with that strange book which deals 
with the same theme, the Book of Enoch, the seventh 
from Adam.” Time was to show that even in this 
expectation which he held in common with the others 
of his race, his remarkable personality had develop- 
ed an individual conception, greater, deeper, and 
more far reaching in religious spirit, than that of 
the others of his time. 

Extraordinarily gifted also he was in his con- 
ception of the nature of God, and his relation to Him. 
The idea of the immanence of God in all things is 
characteristic of the eastern mind, but in Jesus this 
idea reached a richness and fullness that has never 
been known in any other man. With him, God 
seemed always immediately present; not the hard, 
eruel, personally exacting God of the race of his 
fathers, but a God of love, whose relation to him 


8Scholars agree that the picture of the great Judgment given 
in Matthew 25:31ff is based directly on the judgment scene of 
Enoch xe, 20ff. 


THe Baptism sil 


he loved to express by the term ‘‘Father.’’ This 
conception and this attitude, present in some de- 
gree to many Jewish minds of his time, was in him 
developed into the controlling and dominating fea- 
ture in his life. 

John was a relative, if one of the traditions which 
later developed is to be believed.“ It seems prob- 
able that at least they were acquainted in the years 
before the beginning of John’s preaching, and that 
John was familiar with his exceptional qualities, for 
when this carpenter of Nazareth came to the waters 
of Jordan with the multitudes from all over Pales- 
tine to be baptized in preparation for the Kingdom 
which they now were all convinced was about to ap- 
pear, John immediately recognized him and at first 
declined to baptize him. ‘‘I have need to be baptized 
of you,’’ he said, ‘‘and do you come to me?’”” 


“QTuke, Chapter 1, especially v. 36. 


MMatthew 3:14. Another possible explanation of John’s re- 
mark, even more likely than the assumption of previous acquaint- 
ance, may be inferred from the considerations set out in Note 12, 
page 29, supra. ‘The majestic figure which later overawed the 
temple authorities in Jerusalem could easily have elicited such 
a remark from John. 


CHAPTER IIT. 


Tue VISION AND THE AWAKENING 


As Jesus came up from the river, he had an ex- 
traordinary experience. Surcharged as he was with 
the belief that the prophecies were about to be ful- 
filled, that the Messiah was to come immediately and 
the unsatisfactory world with which he was sur- 
rounded was about to pass away to give place to the 
new world in which the will of God was to be su- 
preme; filled with the consciousness of the intimate 
nearness of God, of a close relationship which he 
could, express only by calling God his Father and 
speaking of himself as his Son;—all these powerful 
emotions, freshened and intensified by the meaning 
of the purifying and separative rite which he had 
just undergone at the hands of John, and the ex- 
citement in the crowds surrounding them, found 
sudden fruition in an intense consciousness which 
had the nature of a vision, and ripened into a sub- 
jective sense experience, an experience which took 
form in sight and sound, and which seemed to him 
to have an objective existence outside of himself.’ 

It seemed to him that he saw the heavens opened, 
and from the skies, which to him as to all others of 


‘Mark 1:10-11; Matthew 3:16,17;: Luke 3:21, 22. Such an 
experience, while rare, is by no means without counterpart in 
other lives. Savonarola, Swedenborg, Joan of Are, Socrates, 
Paul, will immediately recur to most minds as examples of great 

[32] 


THe VISION AND THE AWAKENING 33 


his time’ represented the abiding place of the Most 
High, seemed to descend a being in the form of a 
dove, which came to him and rested upon him. At 
the same time, from the open sky he seemed to hear 
a sound, a voice saying to him, ‘* This is my beloved 
Son in whom I am well pleased.’’ 

To a nature such as his, serious and sincere, such 
an ecstatic experience came with almost explosive 
effect. What could be its meaning? It did not oc- 
cur to him to doubt its objective reality or that it 
was tremendously significant to himself. 


personalities whose internal experiences were embodied into sen- 
sational forms so vivid and so real to them that their whole 
lives were remolded upon them. The experience of Paul at the 
gates of Damascus, and his being “lifted up into the third heav- 
en,” of Peter, James and John upon the mount of transfigura- 
tion, are identical in fundamental character with that of Jesus 
at the fords of the Jordan and had similar effect upon the lives 
of those who experienced them. These notable examples, in 
which subjective ideas, heightened by an extraordinary concentra- 
tion of attention and imbedded in emotions of high intensity, 
become vivid enough to be undistinguishable from actual objec- 
tive experiences, all have the religious impulse as the emotional 
background. Other emotions, however, especially fear, remorse 
and grief, when sufficiently intense, have the capacity to cause 
this same objectivization of memories or constructed ideas. 
The essential element of them all, as stated by Ribot (Psy- 
chology and Attention, C. ITI, 2) is “extreme intellectual ac- 
tivity accompanied by intense concentration upon a single idea. 
This is a state of intense and! circumscribed ideation; all life is 
gathered up, as it were, in the thinking brain, in which a single 
representation absorbs everything else.” 


2The world to all the ancients, the Jews no less than the 
Greeks, was a three story affair; the heavens were the divine 
abiding place (except when they thought of the Temple as God’s 
special residence) the earth was the abode of men, while the 
subterranean depths contained the dead and the spirits and gods 
of the underworld. Jesus’ scientific ideas of course were those 
of bis own age. 


34 JESUS THE Man 


Overwhelmed with the wonder of this experience 
and the persistence of the problem as to its mean- 
ing, he withdrew from the crowd which surrounded 
John, to find a solitude where he could think the 
matter out. Near at hand was the wilderness of 
Judea. This stretch of rugged, almost mountainous 
territory, where the descending floods cut the slopes 
which lead down to the Dead Sea into multitudinous 
steep and barren hills, was the dwelling place of wild 
beasts and furnished neither food nor shelter, but it 
meant solitude, and in this solitude, so absorbed by 
the wonderful problem that he even lost sight of the 
demands of the body, so that the days passed with- 
out food and without thought of it, he worked out 
the answer to the question. 

The heavenly vision had said, ‘‘This is my be- 
loved Son.’’ What did this mean? What could it 
mean but that, amazing though it was to him, he 
was to be the Messiah, the Son of Man, who, accord- 
ing to Daniel,’ would come upon the clouds of heaven 
and participate in this renovation of the world 
which was about to occur? But if this be true, how 
was it to come to pass? How was he to be revealed 
to the waiting world? Howshould he use this 
great authority? What was to be the effect upon 
himself? How should he fulfill the hopes of his 
nation for dominion and authority over the world? 
These and countless other queries must have run 
through his mind. 


SPaniel 7:18, 14. *Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13. 


THeE VISION AND THE AWAKENING oo 


The natural selfish tendencies of human nature 
revealed themselves in him. Later, when he dis- 
closed what occurred during this troublous period, 
telling it no doubt to his intimates among the apos- 
tles, he personified this whole experience and es- 
pecially the temptations which came to him as he 
thought his problem out by the statement that the 
devil came to him and tempted him. The story as 
repeated by those who learned it from him took the 
form of three several attempts.* 

What other conceptions and queries occupied fie 
mind during these days of fasting and dreaming 
and doubting we cannot know, as these only he 
seems to have mentioned. But the result we know. 
There among the hills and the rocks in the barren 
immensities of silence and solitude, with the com- 
panionship of only the wild beasts, he wrestled with 
the most tremendous conception that ever entered 
the mind of a man, adjusting it to the facts of his 
experience and the ideas already fixed in him by his 
environment and education, until it occupied a ra- 
tional relation to the remainder of his mentality. 
The man who came from Nazareth a pious and sin- 
cere Jew, who merely desired to fulfill all the re- 
quirements that he might be a participator in the 
coming Kingdom of God, returned out of the wilder- 
ness with the very definite conviction that he was 
in truth the Son of God, and that on him rested the 
burdens of the Messiahship. 


‘Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-18. 


36 JESUS THE MAN 


He returned to the neighborhood of John. By this 
time John’s movement had become a national phe- 
nomenon. All Palestine was in a blaze of excite- 
ment. From all over the section inhabited by the 
Jews the people were crowding to hear John, and 
to accept his baptism. No doubt the orderly course 
of business was disturbed. No doubt in the minds of 
many, ignorant, materialistic, and expecting pure- 
ly a physical revelation, a new political kingdom, 
this excitement revealed itself in disorders and dis- 
turbanees which brought about frequent conflicts 
with the civil authorities. The disturbance became 
a menace to the existing order of things. Herod, the 
tetrarch of Galilee, whose jurisdiction included the 
section where John was preaching, became appre- 
hensive that it might cause a revolution, so he sent 
and arrested John and carried him away to a prison 
located at Machaerus on the borders between Perea 
and Arabia.’ This put an end to his preaching and 
the excitement naturally soon died down. 

It might have been expected that Jesus also would 
be arrested in this attempt to break up the Messianic 
movement. There is some evidence that after his re- 
turn from the wilderness he too had been preaching 
the coming Kingdom to the crowds who flocked to 
John, and who were no doubt greater than John 

‘Josephus, Antiquities XVIII, v. 2. The explanation given in 
Mark (6:17-19) and repeated in Matthew (14:3,4) and Luke 
(3:19, 20) only apparently contradicts the Josephus story and 


is really supplementary to it, as it no doubt refers to state 
ments made by John before Herod after his arrest. 


‘John 4:1-3, 


Tur VISION AND THE AWAKENING qi 


alone could satisfy. But if so, it seems that his con- 
nection with the movement had not continued long 
enough to bring him to the notice of Herod. So 
after the arrest of John and the scattering of his 
crowds, Jesus left the Jordan and returned to his 
home country of Galilee... With him he took the firm 
conviction of the truth of John’s teaching of the im- 
mediate nearness of the Kingdom and of his own 
preeminent part therein. 

At this time his family seems to have removed 
from their home at Nazareth to the larger city of 
Capernaum, on the west shore of the little mland 
sea of Galilee. This city was the home of Jesus 
during the crowded few remaining months of his 
life. 


‘Mark 1:14; Matthew 4:12. 
"Matthew 4:13. 


CHAPTER IV. 


ANNOUNCING THE KINGDOM IN GALILEE 


With the pressure of the consciousness of his great 
mission upon him, Jesus began immediately to renew 
in Galilee the message which John, and perhaps he 
himself, had preached in Judea and Perea. Out of 
his meditations in the wilderness had come at least 
one clear conviction; the obligation rested upon him, 
who positively knew the nearness of the Day of the 
Lord, to warn the people, lest they be taken without 
warning and destroyed. The remainder of his life 
was spent in this task, of warning them of the im- 
pending great event, and advising them how to live 
so as to be safe when the Day should arrive. 

Precisely where he began we do not know. But it 
is certain that in some of the villages of Galilee, 
probably very near Capernaum, was heard again 
the message ‘* The times are fulfilled and the King- 


‘Mark 1, 38: “And he said unto them, let us go into the next 
towns, that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth.” 
Luke 4, 18-21: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he 
hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent 
me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the cap- 
tives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them 
that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. 
And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, 
and sat down, And the eyes of all them that were in the syna- 
gogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, 
“This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Luke 4:43. 
“And he said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of God to 
other cities also: for therefore am I sent.” 


[38] 


ANNOUNCING THE KINGDOM IN GALILEE 39 


dom of Heaven is at hand. Change your hearts and 
believe the good tidings.’’ 

The Messianic hope was as widely distributed 
among the Jews of Galilee as elsewhere. This hope 
had been freshened and made immediate and posi- 
tive by the preaching of John, to whom numbers of 
Galilean Jews also had gone. In this respect it was 
not a new message which Jesus brought to the Gali- 
leans, but one with which they were all familiar, 
and to which they flocked as soon as it was known 
that one was again preaching these good tidings. 
Wherever the Jews gathered in the towns of that 
region, especially in the synagogues, the centers of 
the Jewish life in those communities of mixed popu- 
lations, Jesus went, announcing the nearness of the 
Kingdom and arousing the enthusiasm of his eager 
hearers. The fame of his preaching quickly spread 
throughout that region. 

Very early in this preaching he attracted to him 
four young men whose lives were thereafter most 
intimately bound up with his. In his new home city 
of Capernaum dwelt two families of fishermen who 
plied their occupation on the sea of Galilee. One 
was composed of the brothers Simon and Andrew; 
the other of Zebedee with his sons, James and John. 
These worked together as partners. On one of his 


*Matthew 4:28; Mark 1:39; Luke 4:14, 15, 44. 

‘These synagogue meetings were not limited to the Sabbath. 
Schuerer (§27) quoting from the Talmud says, “it is stated, as the 
mark of a large town, that even on week days there was always 
without difficulty a sufficient number of synagogue frequenters 
present” for a religious meeting. 


40 JESUS THE MAN 


early trips, probably somewhere near Capernaum, 
Jesus sat in Simon’s boat and spoke to the assembled 
multitudes who had practically crowded him off the 
shore in their eagerness to be near him.” After he 
finished speaking, at his suggestion the boat was 
moved farther out into the lake and the net was let 
down in a spot indicated by Jesus. To the astonish- 
ment of the fishermen, who had had a very unsuc- 
cessful night, the net drew up a great quantity of 
fish, so great that Simon, already deeply moved by 
the speech of Jesus, immediately assumed that it 
was the result of his supernatural knowledge. Caught 
by the wonder of his message and deeply impressed 
by this extraordinary event, the four younger men, 
Simon and Andrew, James and John, at his invi- 
tation abandoned their boats and followed this new 
preacher of the coming of the Kingdom. 

It is easy to understand why young men of ardent 
temperament, filled as these men were with the be- 
lief in the reality of the Kingdom of God which Jesus 
was preaching, and convinced that it was in truth 
near at hand, would abandon their daily occupation 
to follow him. ‘* Follow me,’’ he had said ‘‘and IT will 
make you fishers of men.’” Why should they not? 
If this message was true, their daily occupation was 
about to become useless. All the familiar everyday 
things of their world were about to pass away and a 
new world was to come into existence, filled with 


‘Luke 5:1-11; Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20. 
‘Luke puts it “thou shalt take men alive”. 


ANNOUNCING THE KINGDOM IN GALILEE Al 


the presence of the living God, and containing only 
men fit for such a world. Property was no longer 
of value; fitness for the new Kingdom alone was 
worth while. 

The purpose of Jesus in calling them to follow him 
at this time is not so clear. His intent, as shown in 
kis invitation to them, was to induce them also to 
become preachers of the Kingdom to those who were 
in danger of being lost. Apparently it was also a 
manifestation of the natural desire for the constant 
association and cooperation of men of his own type 
of thought, who had similar expectations concerning 
the events of the immediate future. Later, when 
his movement acquired more breadth, their number 
and their function in the movement were expanded. 
During these early days, however, they appeared 
merely as followers, companions, who accompanied 
him on his travels through the neighboring villages 
of Galilee, constant listeners, who gradually ac- 
quired his vivid conception of the immediate end- 
ing of the age and the coming of the Kingdom of God 
and who became daily more impressed with his ex- 
traordinary personal qualities and powers. 

These first intimate associates were themselves 
striking characters. James and John seem to have 
been his cousins, sons of his mother’s sister, Salome. 
Their occupation as fishermen does not properly in- 


‘John 19:25, with Mark 15:40 and Matthew 27:56. The weak- 
ness of the opinion is that it depends upon the historical accuracy 
of the reference to ‘his mother’s sister” in John 19:25, a passage 
which is undoubtedly inaccurate in other respects. 


42 JESUS THE Man 


dicate to modern minds their social standing. They 
were not the poorer type of fishermen, but operated 
upon a more pretentious scale, as they had hired 
helpers who worked with them. The little Sea of 
Galilee at this time was alive with fishing vessels, 
as the fisheries constituted one of the most profit- 
able occupations of that time. It was especially 
fruitful of fish and was far famed through the an- 
cient world for the abundance and_ exceptional 
quality of its products. Fish from this sea were 
carried as far as Rome. Men engaged in the busi- 
ness upon such a scale as they were, occupied a 
superior economic position. 

The two brothers were of vigorous, powerful per- 
sonality, impetuous and eager, of a type which 
Jesus later described by calling them ‘‘sons of 
thunder.’” 

Of Simon and Andrew we know less. Socially and 
economically they seem to have been in a position 
similar to that of the sons of Zebedee, for they were 
partners. We have no indication of any family con- 
nection with Jesus. But Simon in particular was 
a really gifted individual, with a capacity for cour- 
age and leadership which in later years was to make 
him the center around which the followers of Jesus 
would rally and concentrate. These two also seem 
to have been less educated than John and James. 
Simon especially was an individual of a very con- 
crete mind, who was much interested in the things 


™ark 3:17; 9:38; Luke 9:49, 52-54. 


ANNOUNCING THE Kincpom IN GALILEE 43 


which he could see and feel, and was most affected 
by considerations which reached him through ob- 
servation of the world about him. He was impulsive, 
a man of action, and of an intensely loyal nature. 
He was tremendously impressed by the personality 
of Jesus, and was most ready of all his followers to 
impute a supernatural character to events connected 
with him. 

Of Andrew we know very little except that he 
was a brother of Simon and during this period his 
constant associate. 

Other disciples came to Jesus later, other men 
became important in the movement which he initiat- 
ed, but no one disturbed the preeminence which 
these first permanent followers occupied in his af- 
fections. Throughout the crowded and turbulent 
few months when he set his little world in turmoil, 
these four men were with him continuously through 
good report and through evil report, up almost to 
the final hour. And upon Simon, most of all, he 
came to rely for a complete and sympathetic under- 
standing. 

The four followed him to his home in Capernaum 
and then followed a period of the most intense ac- 
tivity which in a short time had all that part of 
Galilee in an excitement greater even than that 
which had been produced a short time before by the 
preaching of John. 

His method was simple. On the Sabbath days he 
went into the synagogues. These were the universal 
gathering places of the Jews. In Galilee at that 


44 JESUS THE MAN 


time the population had become very largely per- 
meated with the Greek and Roman and Syriac ele- 
ments, but in all the towns there was a strong Jewish 
element. Wherever these Jews were found, was 
found a synagogue, at once the product and means of 
perpetuation of the racial and national feeling. Here 
on the Sabbath days the people gathered, hearing 
the reading of the law and the prophets, usually in 
the ancient tongue, then translated into the vernac- 
ular Aramaic, followed by a request to any person 
who had a message to speak to the congregation. 
This opportunity Jesus utilized with telling effect. 
On all Sabbaths he stood in some synagogue and 
told the congregation of how the times spoken of by 
Daniel had been fulfilled, how the prophecies of 
Isaiah and Amos and the other prophets were being 
realized, and that the great and terrible Day of the 
Judgment of the Lord was about to appear, followed 
by the Kingdom of Heaven. On other days of the 
week, he went among the people either in the syna- 
gogues or where they were busied in their daily oc- 
cupations and spoke the same message. Beginning 
at Capernaum through all the numerous villages 
which at that time dotted northern Galilee, he fol- 
lowed this same method. 

His message was little different from that which 
John had brought, but almost from the beginning, he 
brought into his preaching a feature which John 
had lacked. On the first Sabbath after his four new 


"Refer to note 3, this chapter. Apparently he chose the syn- 
agogues wherever possible. 


ANNOUNCING THE KiInGpOoM IN GALILEE 45 


disciples followed him into Capernaum, while he was 
speaking to the congregation, he was interrupted by 
a man who was representative of a type frequently 
found in all times and among all peoples. All races 
have their mentally disturbed, the unbalanced indi- 
viduals whose mental processes for many and 
varying reasons do not operate normally. In our 
own time this type of affliction is rarely seen; 
many of us spend our lives without having come into 
close contact with a person so afflicted. Our in- 
sane, our mentally deranged, are in asylums. But 
in that time there were no such asylums; and these 
mentally deranged and unbalanced persons were 
seattered throughout the population. They seem to 
have been very numerous among the people of Pal- 
estine at that time, but no doubt if our asylums were 
closed and their inmates scattered among our popu- 
lation, our own insane would seem even more omni- 
present. 

In our time the development of medical knowledge 
has caused us to understand in large degree what 
these diseases are. We refer them to their causes; 
to lesions in the nervous substance, to disturbances 
of circulation and of other vital processes, to a fail- 
ure to function by some special part of the nervous 
system, to many other causes all of which are under- 
standable. We think of mental disorder as a per- 
fectly comprehensible disturbance in the individual, 
which yields to medical treatment or to the power 
of suggestion, to definite procedure based upon ra- 
tional interpretation of conditions. Cure of insanity 


46 JESUS THE Man 


or mental disturbance is frequent and natural; it 
excites no astonishment. But in the time of Jesus 
all of these things were far in the future. Mental 
disturbance was incomprehensible upon any ordinary 
explanation. Such ideas as dissociation of person- 
ality, auto-suggestion, complexes, inhibition, disor- 
ganization, and the many explanations now given for 
these troubles, were undreamed of by him or by the 
people among whom he lived. They had a much 
simpler explanation of the phenomena. They fell 
back upon the idea which has come to all people 
with undeveloped scientific ideas; they referred the 
disturbance to the effect upon the individual of 
some ‘‘demon’’ who had taken possession of him. 

The world of Jesus’ time, in the belief of himself 
and his contemporaries, was peopled with whole 
races of beings which to us are but names but to 
them were vivid actualities. Angels, as the assist- 
ants and messengers of God, were believed to be 
active everywhere, All the evil and pain in the world 
were explained by the activity of a supreme evil 
spirit called by the ancient name of Beelzebub or by 
the later name of Satan, who was believed to be as- 
sisted and obeyed by hosts of inferior evil spirits or 
demons. These were the disembodied spirits of the 
giants who were the offspring of the fallen sons of 
God and the daughters of men.” These last were the 

*Enoch XV, 1-12, XVI, 1. Particularly XV, 8 ff: “And now 
the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be 
called evil spirits upon the earth, and on the earth shall be their 


dwelling. Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because 
they are born from men and from the holy watchers (fallen 


ANNOUNCING THE KINGDOM IN GALILEE 47 


beings who, according to the understanding of that 
time, had taken possession of these poor ‘‘demoni- 
acs,’’ who caused the paroxysms of the epileptic, 
the ravings of the insane, the vagaries of the dis- 
sociated personality. 

The only relief for the unfortunates thus 
‘*pnossessed’’ was for some one who had superior in- 
fluence or authority to force the demon to abandon 
his victim. Among the Jews were professional ex- 
orcists, who sometimes accomplished this result by 
means of specially devised rites and formulae, the 
effect of which was supposed to be to compel the 
demon to abandon his victim.” And now when Jesus 
was interrupted by the ravings of this afflicted man, 
he applied the only conception known to his time, 
but with a new method. Confronting him with the 
appearance and words of authority he peremptorily 
commanded the supposed demon: ‘‘ Hold thy peace, 
and come out of him.”’ 

Similar methods under similar conditions have 
thousands of times since provoked the same result. 
The mentally disturbed individual was overpowered 


angels) is their beginning and primal origin: they shall be evil 
spirits on earth and evil spirits shall they be called. And the 
spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle 
and work destruction on the earth and cause trouble; they take 
no food, but nevertheless hunger and thirst, and cause offenses. 
And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and 
against the women, because they have proceeded from them.” 
These demons were not expected to be punished until the judg- 
ment, at which time they were to be destroyed (XVI, 1.) The 
origin of the idea seems to have been Genesis 6:1-4. 


Matthew 12:27. 


48 JESUS THE Man 


by the suggestion of the more vigorous and more 
highly willed personality. He believed that the 
demon was being driven from him. A nervous par- 
oxysm followed; he was freed from his obsession; 
he stood up healed; the devil ‘‘had gone out of him.”’ 

In our time, when physicians skilled in the use of 
suggestion apply similar methods we recognize the 
operation of definite mental laws. But to the un- 
scientific and for the most part densely ignorant 
people who saw this most extraordinary thing hap- 
pen, it was the revelation of the direct hand of God: 
who but God had a power superior to that of the 
devil over his minions? What could this procedure 
mean? Here were no rites of exorcism, no secret 
forms of words; he merely commanded and ‘‘the de- 
mon had come out.’’ They were all amazed inso- 
much that they questioned among themselves, say- 
ing, ‘‘ What is this new teaching? With authority he 
ecommandeth even the evil spirits and they obey 
ina 

Quickly the report of this miraculous event swept 
through the crowded population of Capernaum. It 
was immediately followed by a similar event in 
which the mother-in-law of Peter was relieved of a 
fever by the inspiration of the presence of Jesus, 
whose hold on the popular confidence and imagina- 
tion was already becoming very great. It is perhaps 
impossible for us who live in a period when ecmpe- 
tent and scientific physicians are abundant, when 
most diseases and their causes are thoroughly un- 
derstood, when the means for the alleviation of hu- 


ANNOUNCING THE KinGpoM IN GALILEE 49 


man suffering have been multiplied and improved, 
to understand what the effect must have been in a 
population where disease and suffering were far 
more abundant than among us and hopeless beyond 
expression. For most of the ills to which flesh is 
heir there was to the people of Jesus’ time no relief. 
There were no anaesthetics; there was practically 
no surgery; suffering was to be endured; for the 
sufferer there was little or no hope. 

To a population thus filled with suffering and 
devoid of hope the information must have run like 
an electric thrill, that here was some one who was 
able to heal diseases, to relieve pain. In Cap- 
ernaum that first wonderful day, within a few hours 
after these two ‘‘cures’”’ had been effected, the whole 
population of the city had gathered around the house 
where Jesus was. All the sick people of Capernaum 
were there. All the demoniac, the insane, and 
possessed were there. With one accord the whole 
people rushed to the man who had unexpectedly 
shown the capacity to heal. 

The later reports of this event state that he healed 
all that were brought to him. The older, more cau- 
tious, More correct story by Mark” merely states 
that ‘‘He healed many that were sick with divers 
diseases and cast out many devils.’’ 

It is not extraordinary to believe that among that 
multitude of distressed humanity there were num- 
bers of disorders which would yield to the sugges- 


uMark, 1:34. Cf Matthew 8:17, Luke 4:40. 


50 BSW JESUS THE Man 


tion of so vigorous and powerful a personality. We 
have seen many times in subsequent centuries how 
such healing enthusiasm takes possession of a mul- 
titude so that numbers are healed through the con- 
tagion of the belief in the healing of those about 
them. This too would have helped. There is no 
good reason to doubt the accuracy of the statement 
of Mark. 

Neither is there any reason to wonder at the re- 
sult which immediately followed. In a very short 
space of time it was impossible for Jesus openly to 
enter into a city because of the multitudes that 
thronged about him, pressing for the cure of their 
sick and possessed. Wherever he went they crowded 
about him, hanging upon the words of promise and 
of hope which he spoke, looking forward to a new 
heaven and a new earth where pain and suffering 
and sickness should cease entirely; but most of all 
seeking for the healing power of his presence and 
his words upon those who in this world were already 
sick and distressed.” 

It is not necessary to refer in detail to the inci- 
dents which characterized this period of his activ- 
ity. They were all practically of the same charac- 
ter. His message was the promise of the immedi- 
ateness of the end of the age and of the coming of 
the Kingdom of Heaven. The instances of healing 

“That Jesus should assume that the various human weak- 
nesses would be healed by his commands was a natural corol- 
lary to his belief in his special relation to God. Such phenom- 


ena were expected to accompany the approaching Kingdom. Cf 
Isaiah 35:3-6; 42:6, 7. 


ANNOUNCING THE KINGDOM IN GALILEE 59 | 


were practically of the same type: words of authori- 
ty, suggestions of various type; commands to the 
demon to depart, forgiveness of the sins, the sense 
of which oppressed the minds of the sick as the 
cause of their suffering. Success in such activities 
increased the possibility of more such results, as 
confidence in him increased. The effect upon the 
people was the same everywhere; ‘‘They were all 
amazed and glorified God, saying ‘we never saw it 
in this fashion.’ ”’ 

What part of the people at this time were drawn 
to him by their delight in his message, and desire 
to observe his warning, what part of them by the 
hope of benefit from his power to heal, it is of course 
impossible to tell, but it is extremely likely that the 
healing impressed them most. The tendency to 
‘take the cash and let the credit go’’ is strong in all 
peoples and all ages. Here was something immedi- 
ate, perceptible, intensely desirable. Here there was 
no uncertainty. They hoped with him, believed 
with him in the coming of the future Kingdom of 
Heaven, but they rejoiced with him in what both he 
and they came quickly to believe to be the hand of 
God working among them, relieving their suffering 
and saving their lives. 


CHAPTER V. 


ConFuict WITH THE PHARISEES 


The enthusiasm which now possessed Jesus and 
those who walked with him gave little heed to 
thoughts of powers or_ boundaries. All believed 
that the end of the world was near at hand and gave 
little or no heed to the fact that they were in a time 
and place where they were subject to authority and 
must be restrained by the laws of their own people 
as well as by those of the alien government which 
was set over them. Such a state of mind was certain 
to lead them into conflict with those responsible 
for the maintenance of peace among the population. 
But Jesus’ earliest official trouble occurred with 
the influential class of his own nation, and arose 
from questions of the Jewish ceremonial law. 

The Pharisees were an element of Jewish society 
of great influence both with the government of 
Galilee and with the government of Judea. They 
were men of high social standing, who in general 
conformed to the laws and regulations of the foreign- 
controlled civil government under which they lived, 
but at the same time considered themselves in a 
peculiar sense responsible for the maintenance of the 
Jewish ritualistic law. This law, though perhaps 
not specifically enforced by the civil authorities, was 
yet practically in effect among the Jews throughout 


the whole of Palestine, wherever the Jewish tradi- 
[52] 


ConFLicr WITH THE PHARISEES ey 


tion was powerful and predominant, and of this law 
the Pharisees as a class were the interpreters. 

The scribes, or lawyers, who were for the most 
part Pharisees, by centuries of ingenious and often 
fictitious logic had built up around the plain lan- 
guage of the ancient laws a host of rules and tra- 
ditions and observations which had come to have 
with them and with the mass of the population dom- 
inated by them the same force and weight as the 
ancient law itself. Of these traditions and obser- 
vances the Pharisees considered themselves the 
special custodians, observing them in their own 
personal lives with the most meticulous care and 
precision and urging such observations upon all 
others. 

Possessed as he was with the powerful conception 
of the immediate presence of God himself and the 
impending destruction of existing institutions and 
systems, Jesus plainly saw the uselessness and com- 
plete lack of value of the complicated and artificial 
system which had been built up around and upon the 
Jewish nation. His outlook was that of the genuine 
Jew, but the tremendous idea which possessed him 
revealed to him the hollowness of the observances 
which the Pharisee class emphasized as absolutely 
necessary. 

In his own life and in his dealings with the people 
he threw aside as useless many of these observances, 
and early in the development of his movement this 
forced him into direct conflict with these Pharisees. 
Their religious interests had quickly brought them 


54 JESUS THE MAN 


into contact with Jesus. The man who was predict- 
ing the early coming of the Kingdom and drawing 
the multitudes about him by his marvelous healing 
power, was tremendously interesting to these men. 
Many of them were strong adherents of the belief in 
the coming of the Messiah. They were more intelli- 
gent than the general mass of the Galilean popula- 
tion, and consequently were less affected by the im- 
mense confidence that the Kingdom was immediately 
to appear which Jesus was able to communicate to 
the unlettered and unlearned multitude. They were 
nevertheless deeply interested in hearing his ideas 
upon this subject and they were consequently among 
the first to listen to him. 

They took no offense at his Messianic teaching 
during these early weeks. They were not disturbed 
by a conception which was very similar to their own, 
if not identical with it, the greatest difference being 
in the definiteness of the time which Jesus an- 
nounced. But practically at the very beginning of 
his work he gave them deep offense by the free and 
cavalier manner in which he treated their legal tra- 
dition. 

This antagonism caused him a great deal of in- 
convenience and interference during the whole 
period of his work. It grew out of a number of 
conflicts over legal traditions, probably extending 
over the entire period of his preaching. Mark, 
otherwise the most accurate of his chroniclers,—and 
perhaps so even in this case,—has assembled all 
these controversies in one series without reference 


ConFLict WITH THE PHARISEES 5D 


to the exact time when they may have occurred. 

The first one occurred at Capernaum almost at the 
beginning of his preaching. After one of his jour- 
neys out among the villages of Galilee he returned 
to Capernaum and it became known. that he was at 
home. No sooner was this known than the populace 
crowded about his home, packing not merely the in- 
terior of the house, where Jesus was, but the area 
about the door so that it was impossible for any one 
to reach him. The friends of a paralytic, seeking 
to reach Jesus in order that his wonderful healing 
power might be invoked, attempted to penetrate the 
erowd but were unable to do so. In the earnestness 
of their desire and the determination not to miss the 
opportunity, they went to the top of the house, and 
broke up the thatch covering the place where Jesus 
was. Attaching ropes to the corners of the bed upon 
which he lay, they let the man down into the immedi- 
ate presence of Jesus. 

Jesus recognized in the mental condition of the 
man and of those who had brought him the state of 
mind which he and the gospel writers after him de- 
nominated by the word ‘‘faith;’’ that is, a great 
suggestibility, a domination by a confidence in the 
Superior power of the man in whose presence they 
were, a trusting belief that this man had the authori- 
ty and power to heal him of his affliction. It was an 
attitude of mind which made powerful suggestion 
not only possible but almost unavoidable. 

Jesus spoke to him in terms which both he and 
they understood. Such a condition as that in which 


56 JESUS THE Man 


the man before him found himself was universally 
believed by the Jews of that time to be the result of 
sin, a punishment sent upon him by God, because of 
some violation of the law.’ ‘‘Son,’’ he said, ‘‘thy 
sins are forgiven.’’ 

Lawyers were sitting in that room, listening with 
interest to the words of Jesus, though until this 
time with only a general interest. But these words 
of the preacher aroused them with a shock. ‘*Why 
does this man speak thus?’’ they said. ‘‘He blas- 
phemes. Who can forgive sin but God?’’ Their 
shocked and suddenly antagonistic faces revealed 
to Jesus the displeasure he had given to them. His 
quick mind perceived the nature of their reaction 
to his words. ‘‘Why do you think these thoughts?’’ 
he said. ‘*Which is easier, to say to this sick man 
‘Thy sins are forgiven,’ or to say ‘ Arise, take up your 
bed and walk?’ But that you may know that the 
Son of Man’ has authority on earth to forgive sins,”’ 


'For some classes of their disorders such conception was not 
so unsound as at first glance it may seem to be. No more dis- 
organizing factor in the human mind is known than a deep con- 
sciousness of sin. Various types of mental disorders to-day have 
their origin in the suppressed memories or consciousness of great 
wrongs committed by the sufferer, even presenting the more 
physical forms of hysteria, anaesthesia, sometimes even paralysis 
such as in the case recorded in the text. One of the most ap- 
proved methods of modern alienists is that of searching out these 
obscure and carefully concealed factors and inducing the recti- 
fication of the wrong, in order to eliminate the evil results that 
have followed the attempted suppression of its memory. In other 
words they try to supply the feeling that ‘“‘the sin is forgiven”. 
The method does not differ substantially from that used by Jesus. 


‘Here for the first time we meet with the expression “the Son 


ConFuLicrt WITH THE PHARISEES Yi 


—here he turned to the palsied man,—‘‘I say unto 
you, arise, take up your bed, and go into your 
house.’’ 

The suggestion was complete. The inhibiting 
sense of his own sinfulness which lay at the base of 
his paralysis was removed from the man; _ he 
thought his sins were forgiven and that their results 
were consequently done away with. The inhibition 
was removed. Just as happens to-day under similar 
conditions, his muscles responded to his will; he 
arose, took up his bed and walked forth before 
them all. 

The multitude was amazed and grateful; they 
voiced their thanks to God, whom they understood 
to have wrought this wonder through the instrumen- 
tality of Jesus. But the lawyers did not forget the 
offensive assumption of Jesus. According to their 
view he was practically guilty of the highest of all 


of Man” used in the reported language of Jesus as referring to 
himself. Much discussion has revolved about the problems grow- 
ing out of this term and its application to Jesus, and there are 
phases of the problem upon which there is still no agreement 
among scholars. It is clear however (1) that it had its origin 
in Daniel 7:13-14; (2) that the Danielic appearance was ex- 
pected in connection with the appearance of the Messianic King- 
dom; (38) that Jesus used it frequently, in two distinct senses, 
sometimes as referring to the well known personage of the future 
without identifying him with himself, sometimes clearly mean- 
ing such identification; (4) that his frequent use of it in this 
sense led his biographers, at a later date when his identification 
with both the Messiah and the one who should come on the 
clouds of heaven had become complete with his followers, fre- 
quently to place it in his mouth as a substitute for the pronoun 
I, perhaps, even probably, sometimes when he did not actually 
use it. This is probably such an oceasion. 


58 JESUS THE Man 


Jewish crimes,—blasphemy. He had not claimed 
to the multitude to be the Son of God. This secret 
he kept locked in his own heart. To the multitude and 
to the scribes he was a preacher of good tidings, a 
man whom they now were beginning to believe firm- 
ly to be gifted with supernatural powers, to be able 
to invoke the direct intervention of God; but he had 
made no claim before them which justified his as- 
sumption of the authority to forgive sin. The 
scribes saw the implication contained in his assump- 
tion of a power which belonged only to God, sensed 
something of the greatness of his presumption and 
viewed it with displeasure and apprehension. 

Another occasion followed quickly. As he passed 
along the streets of Capernaum on his way to the 
seacoast, his favorite spot for addressing the crowds 
which now surged about him, he passed by the office 
of the tax collector and saw there Levi, or Matthew, 
the son of Alphaeus, who, though a Jew, was engag- 
ed in the hated occupation of collecting the taxes. No 
doubt he had been a frequent hearer of Jesus, and 
was profoundly affected by the vision of the coming 
Kingdom which he preached. At his invitation ‘‘ Fol- 
low me,’’ just as the four earlier disciples had done 
the publican left his place of business, left his occu- 
pation and his contract with the government, his 
property and his worldly prospects and followed 
Jesus. 

Levi was a man of substantial property, as were 
all the farmers of the Roman taxes. He celebrated 
the change in his outlook and purpose by a great 


ConFLIcT WITH THE PHARISEES 59 


feast in his own house, to which he invited Jesus 
with his disciples and with them a number of people 
who had become attached to him. Among these were 
representatives of two classes who were especially 
hateful to the law-observing Pharisees: men engaged 
in Levi’s own unpopular occupation,—the tax-gath- 
erers or ‘‘publicans’’; and those who did not observe 
the law—‘‘sinners.’’ The tax-gatherers especially 
were hated by all classes of the Jews, who believed 
that in enforcing the tax laid upon their nation by a 
foreign authority these publicans were doing an il- 
legal thing which gave affront to God. 

This tax was the most humiliating phase of their 
subject condition, and the men who enforced it re- 
ceived in their own person the full weight cof the 
hatred felt toward the oppressing foreigners. The 
intimate ceremony of eating, in common association, 
with people who did not observe the legal require- 
ments, in the minds of the strict ceremonialists made 
those who thus associated with them also unclean. 
For a man who was engaged in preaching the near 
approach of the Kingdom of God, this ignoring of 
what they considered to be the requirements of God 
seemed to the Pharisees incongruous and contradic- 
tory. 

The Pharisees themselves of course were not 
present. They would not participate in such a pro- 
miscuous contact with the unclean multitude. But 
a little later when they met some of the immediate 
followers of Jesus, they asked them the question, 
‘*How is it that your Master eats and drinks with 


60 JESUS THE Man 


the tax-gatherers and those who keep not the law?’’ 
These disciples were not willing to speak for Jesus 
and took the question to him. He said, ‘*They that 
are whole have no need for a physician, but they that 
are sick do. I came not to eall the righteous, who 
have no need, but the sinner to repentence.’” 

This profound statement went to the foundation 
of Jesus’ conception of his mission. In the new 
world which was about to dawn upon them, the 
righteous would escape the judgment; they needed 
no help from anybody. But the great multitude of the 
sinners, of those whose fruits were evil, who would 
be unable to stand in that great day, moved the soul 
of this lover of his kind. His heart went out to them. 
'T’o save them from the wrath that was to come, to 
cause them to change their minds, to submit to the 
will of God so that they too might participate in the 
coming Kingdom, he was giving himself freely. But 
in the Pharisees and the lawyers, who believed that 
salvation from the wrath to come was to be secured 
not through the attitude of the soul, but through 
conformity to the ceremonies of the law, this great 
purpose and love that actuated him found no re- 
sponse. His teaching set aside the value of the 
law by which they believed they were to be justified ; 
it sought to open the Kingdom to those whom they 
considered utterly unfit for it. A difference so pro- 
found necessarily caused an increasing antagonism. 

He speedily came into conflict with them in a still 


*The discourses included in Luke 15 were probably delivered 
at this time in addition to the brief quotation given by Mark, 


ConFLIcT WITH THE PHARISEES 61 


more important matter. Of all the ritualistic re- 
quirements of the Jews none were so rigid as those 
surrounding the observance of the Sabbath. About 
this particular requirement all the logic and dia- 
lectical skill of generations of lawyers had busied 
themselves and had built up a structure of detailed 
limitation which practically prohibited action of any 
kind upon that day. The extent to which they carried 
their conception of the holiness of the Sabbath day 
by forbidding any of the normal occupations or ac- 
tivities is almost unbelievable. Even the simplest 
and most necessary human functions were forbidden. 
Practically no service of any kind could be done for 
one’s self or for any one else. Some of the most ex- 
treme went to the point of lying absolutely motion- 
less throughout the day on the supposition that ac- 
tivity of any kind was a violation of its holiness. The 
Pharisees did not go quite that far, but stopped not 
far short of it. The whole Sabbath system had be- 
come a tremendous burden upon the lives of the 
pious Jews that is scarcely conceivable to us, who 
have inherited through the centuries only a slight 
tinge of the conception which lay at the basis of their 
rigid system. 

This view of the Sabbath had lost its hold upou 
Jesus. He saw the hollowness and uselessness of it. 
Dominated with the idea of the speedy coming of 
the Kingdom, he saw how the exaggerated and rigid 
restraint which this Sabbath idea placed about the 
lives of men was a hindrance instead of a help. His 
disciples shared in his freedom of action; as was in- 


62 JESUS THE Man 


evitable, sharing as they did his fundamental ideas. 

The year had now come to the harvest time, about 
June. As they passed along the narrow country 
roads through Galilee, the disciples began as they 
went to reach into the wheat that grew along the 
side of the road, to pluck the ripening heads and to 
rub the grain out with their hands and eat it. Their 
law permitted this to be done; it was lawful to pick 
from the fields through which they were passing so 
much as they could rub out of the ear with their 
hands. But it was the Sabbath day, and some Phari- 
sees, perhaps passing along at the same time, ob- 
served this process and took them to task, not for 
taking the grain, but for breaking the Sabbath by 
rubbing it out of the ear. They criticised Jesus for 
permitting his disciples to break the law in this 
fashion. His answer was to the point and directly 
contradictory to their ideas. He said, ‘‘Did you 
never read what David did when he had need and 
was hungry, he and they that were with him? How 
he entered into the house of God and ate the show- 
bread which it is not lawful to eat save for the priest, 
and gave also to them that were with him?’’ That 
is, the law was not intended to interfere in a case of 
genuine need; the hunger of his disciples was suf- 
ficient answer as to the infraction of the letter of 
the law. Then he stated the broad basis of the whole 
Sabbath idea: ‘‘ The Sabbath was made for man and 
not man for the Sabbath.’” 


‘The sentence which completes the incident in the text of all 
three of the gospels ‘so that the Son of Man is lord of the Sab- 


ConFuict WITH THE PHARISEES 63 


This seems to us entirely reasonable. But to them 
it was a violation of their most profound legal and 
religious notions. Bear in mind that to them, Sab- 
bath breaking was not only an unreligious act but 
was a genuine infraction of the law, punishable by 
death. To the Jew, there was no distinction between 
his religious conceptions and regulations and his 
laws. He had no laws except those which were based 
upon his religious ideas, and his religious regula- 
tions had all the force of law. To these Pharisees 
Jesus appeared as a law violator, in one of the most 
important of all laws. He now began to appear to 
them in the same light in which a criminal of a very 
dangerous type now appears to us. 

A little later occurred another instance, again in 
the Capernaum synagogue. Among the crowd that 
gathered to hear Jesus speak on that Sabbath day 
was a man who had a withered hand. Apparently 
it was known that the man was there in the hope of 
being healed by this prophet who was now the most 
marked figure in all Galilee, for the Pharisees who 
were present watched Jesus closely to see if he 
would heal him on the Sabbath day. They were now 
well aware of his illegal and dangerous ideas, and 


bath” seems to have no logical connection with the preceding 
discussion and conveys an assumption that he was already open- 
ly claiming the authority of God—an idea contradicted by all the 
spirit of the Marcan story. He certainly had not openly claimed 
to be either God or the Son of God prior to Caesarea Philippi. 
Probably Mark 2:28 was not intended as the words of Jesus, but 
was Mark’s own comment on the Sabbath question, which was 
still very much alive when Mark wrote. For a similar instance, 
where Mark draws a conclusion on a question vital among Christ- 
ians at that time, see Mark 7:19. 


64 JESUS THE Man 


were beginning to seek an opportunity to acquire 
grounds for legal action against him. 

Jesus was perfectly aware of their attitude, and 
of the significance of his own opinion on the Sab- 
bath. But he was not restrained by considerations 
of personal danger. Beside, his attitude was _ so 
clear and so reasonable to himself that it seemed 
that it must be so to every one else. He said to the 
man, ‘‘Stand forth.’’ Then turning to the Pharisees, 
whose spirit of criticism and evil purpose was mani- 
fest in their expression of countenance, if not in 
actual words of criticism, he said ‘‘Is it lawful on the 
Sabbath day to do good or to do harm? to save a life 
Ontoskilless 

The question was difficult for the Pharisees. Hard 
of heart, practically without sympathy, harboring 
the opinion that to obey the letter of the law was far 
better than to do a deed of mercy, they nevertheless 
hesitated to state such an opinion in the face of a 
crowd which was already deeply attached to Jesus 
because of his merciful heart and kindly actions. 
But the restraint which controlled them only in- 
creased their feeling of antagonism and its mani- 
festation in their attitude toward Jesus. 

Their merciless attitude and growing antagonism 
aroused extreme irritation in him. He looked round 
upon them in anger and indignation; he said, ‘* What 
man among you that has one sheep and if it fall in- 
to a pit on the Sabbath day, will not lay hold on it 
and lift it out? How much is a man better than a 
sheep?’’ Then as they remained silent, he turned 


ConFuicrt WITH THE PHARISEES 65 


to the man who was standing before him in intense 
hope and expectation. ‘‘Stretch forth your hand,’’ 
Jesus said to him. And there before them the re- 
straint upon circulation, caused no doubt by some 
self-suggestion of injury, or of sin, was removed by 
the confidence that this man who spake thus au- 
thoritatively had undone the cause of his disorder. 
And the man was healed. 

But this open defiance of the most powerful and 
influential class of all the Jews bore its natural 
fruit. If the Jewish nation had been operating in 
its own sovereignty, Jesus would have been arrested 
immediately and put to death for a violation of one 
of the most sacred laws. As it was, the Jews of 
Galilee had neither nationality nor local government. 
They were the subjects of Herod, who exercised over 
them complete authority. They had no opportunity 
to bring him into condemnation for the violation of 
the Sabbath law. But they saw clearly the danger 
to the peace of Galilee involved in the continuance 
of his preaching and they now went to the local of- 
ficers of Herod to make complaint of the activity 
of Jesus, to tell of the character of his preaching, 
which they know from Herod’s action against John 
to be displeasing to him, and to bring Jesus into con- 
demnation as a disturber of the peace. From this 
time on they looked on him as a disturbing and dan- 
gerous factor, a threat to the basic Jewish legal insti- 
tutions, one whose preaching of the Kingdom could 
not be true because he at the same time preached 
doctrines contrary to the law, consequently one who 


66 JESUS THE Man 


misled the people to their danger and disadvantage. 
His destruction, which they now believed necessary, 
but which they could not accomplish of their own 
initiative, they sought to accomplish indirectly 
by bringing him into conflict with Herod’s authority. 

Jesus realized the disturbance he had created. He 
saw the threat contained in the antagonism and the 
activity of the Pharisees. Their complaint to the 
authorities made his presence there unsafe until it 
eould be seen whether Herod’s government would 
act upon it. Taking his disciples he withdrew to the 
seaside further north along the shore of the Sea of 
Galilee, temporarily out of contact with the trouble- 
some Pharisees and the busy officers of Herod. 
Thither followed him’ the great multitude. 

By this time word of this new preacher of the 
kingdom had gone all over Palestine. With it had 
gone the information that this man not merely 
preached the gospel of the speedy coming of the 
Kingdom, as John had done, but that through him 
was manifested the power of God; that he healed 
people of diseases and cast out devils. From every 
quarter of Palestine people had come and on this day 
great crowds followed him out to his resort by the 
seaside. From Galilee, from the country of Judea, 
from the Jewish capital, Jerusalem itself, from 
Tdumea still further south, from Perea beyond the 
Jordan, from far up the Mediterranean coast as far 


5Mark 3:7-12; Matthew 12:15-21. Luke 6:12. Note the in- 
ference contained in Matthew 12:15 that he withdrew because he 
recognized the plot against him. 


ConFLict WITH THE PHARISEES 67 


as Tyre and Sidon, came Jews who hoped for the 
early coming of the Kingdom, together with those 
who brought their sick and their possessed to be 
healed by him. The scene was one that could not 
have been duplicated at any other time or place in 
the history of the world. Here on the shore of that 
inland sea were multitudes without number, repre- 
sentatives of an ancient and proud but oppressed 
race, stript not only of property but of opportunity. 
Filled with a sense of injustice and misery, pro- 
foundly believing even in the face of all this that 
they were the chosen children of God, and that the 
time would come when all these troubles would be 
done away, the hand of the oppressor would be lift- 
ed from them, and their nation would be raised to its 
former greatness, bringing to them indescribable 
possibilities of happiness and freedom, they were 
come together to hear this man tell them in wonder- 
ful eloquence and absolute assurance that the time 
was now immediately at hand when these blessings 
were to come to them. The contagion of a common 
purpose, a common hope, and a common confidence 
in this great prophet swept over the multitude. The 
individual was caught up in the spiritual exaltation 
of the great crowd. Under the inspiration of the 
great occasion, overwhelmed with the power and the 
wonderful personality of the prophet who spoke, 
raised to supreme heights of faith in his superhuman 
capacity, his suggestions took hold of them with the 
firmness of actuality. Numbers were healed of their 
afflictions; disordered mentalities responded to the 


68 JESUS THE Man 


graciousness of his words and of his personality 
and returned to ordered mental processes. The 
crowds pressed upon him, those on the outskirts 
seeking eagerly to reach the place where he stood 
and threatening the personal safety of those who 
stood near to him and even of Jesus himself. He 
sought safety in the only means left to him; he 
called to his disciples to bring him a boat, but in- 
stead of departing in it he merely withdrew from 
the pressure of the throng and as soon as it had 
scattered sufficiently to permit him to make his way 
through it, he climbed up the precipitous sides of 
the mountain overlooking the lake, only a short 
distance away from it, and relieved himself of the 
pressure of the multitude. 

To assure himself of safety from any attempts of 
the officials to arrest him, he did not return to 
Capernaum on this night, but spent it in the moun- 
tain, carefully cautioning those who knew his pur- 
pose not to reveal his refuge. 


‘Matt. 12:16, 17. The parallel, Mark 3:12, is subject to the 
possible interpretation that he was charging the unclean spirits 
not to make him known. The two together make it clear that 
he was seeking secrecy. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THe GREAT Discourses AT CAPERNAUM—HeE LEAVES 


CAPERNAUM. 


The weight of this task was becoming too great. 
His meditation in the solitude of that night ripened 
the conviction that he must have help in carrying 
his message; that it would be impossible for him 
alone to reach all the lost sheep of the house of Is- 
rael, to give them an opportunity to change their 
hearts and become fit for membership in the King- 
dom before the time when it should arrive. So with 
the coming of the morrow he sent’ to the multitude 
which was awaiting his return at the foot of the 
mountain, and called to him twelve men, whose in- 
terest and belief in the message were strongest and 
whose superior ability had impressed him and had 
convinced him of their fitness for the work to be 
done. 

Twelve was a pecuharly significant number. 
Though the ten tribes had long been separated from 
the rest of the Jews and the old tribal organization 
was merely a tradition, it was nevertheless a very 
sacred tradition. The Jews believed that in the 
Kingdom of God when it should appear, the scat- 


Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:13-16. It is likely that the five already 
chosen by him, or some of them, accompanied him into his se- 
clusion the previous night. 


[69] 


70 JESUS THE Man 


tered ten tribes would again be united to the faith- 
ful two tribes and that the renewed and recon- 
structed Israel would again contain twelve tribes 
as of old. Jesus was completely a Jew in his mental 
outlook and the selection of twelve men, as shown 
by his subsequent statement, was for the pur- 
pose of adjusting his own organization of workers 
to the future kingdom of twelve tribes. At .a later 
time he told these twelve that in the day of judg- 
ment, the twelve should sit upon twelve thrones, 
judging the twelve tribes of Israel.’ Among these 
twelve, preeminent were the four who had accom- 
panied him for the past few weeks, since the be- 
ginning of his preaching in Galilee,—Peter and 
Andrew, James and John. With them were in- 
eluded Levi, or Matthew, the tax gatherer of Caper- 
naum; Simon of Cana, well known as an adherent 
of that great Judas who had stirred up the disturb- 
ance in the time of the enrollment, probably prom- 
inent in the troubles of that time, and for this rea- 
son called the Zealot’; Judas, from the town of Ke- 


"Matthew 19:28. 


*The enrollment or “taxing”, by Quirinius which Luke places 
at the time of Jesus’ birth, occurred actually in the thirty-sev- 
enth year of Augustus’ victory over Antony at Actium (Jos. Antiq. 
XVIII, ii, 1) or during 6 and 7 A. D. Most of the Jews sub- 
mitted peacefully to the enrollment, or assessment, which was 
especially hateful to the Jews, even when performed by their own 
kings. Some of the bolder spirits, however, under the leadership 
of Judas the Galilean, resisted bitterly. Jos. Wars II, viii, 1: 
“A certain Galilean whose name was Judas, prevailed with his 
countrymen to revolt; and said they were cowards if they would 
endure to pay a tax to the Romans, and would, after God, sub- 
mit to mortel men as their lords’. In the Antiquities (XVIII, 


Tue Great Discoursss at CAPERNAUM ffi 


rioth and for that reason called Ish-karioth, or man 
of Kerioth; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas; and 
the brothers James and Judas, the sons of Alpheus, 
or Clopas, like John and James probably cousins of 
Jesus. Names for the most part common even 
among the Jews, but in the centuries that have 
passed since then, written by thousands and tens 
of thousands in every record, every census, every 
muster roll of the western world. 

When he had named these men and asked them 
to undertake this task and they in turn had accepted 
it, he came down from the mountain to the level sea 
coast at its foot,’ and began to teach them and such 
part of the multitude as could come within reach 
of his words the real meaning of his message, so 


i, 1) the same historian describes at greater length the purposes 
and appeals of Judas, and alleges that the subsequent disasters 
of the Jews had their beginning in this rebellion and the ideas 
which caused it. Messianic ideas are evident in the cautious 
language in which Josephus describes the beliefs of these Zeal- 
ots (Antiq XVIII, i, 6): ‘These men agree in all other things 
with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attach- 
ment to liberty; and say that God is to be their only Ruler and 
Lord. They also do not value dying any kind of death, nor 
indeed do they heed the deaths of their relations and friends, 
nor can any such fear make them call any man Lord”. Jesus 
was a boy of eight or nine years when this outbreak took place. 
Judas was a Galilean and the disturbance was in Galilee. Jesus 
may conceivably have seen and talked with Judas himself and 
certainly was familiar with his followers and his ideas. It is 
very Significant that one so thoroughly identified with this move- 
ment as to be called “the Zealot” should have been one of Jesus’ 
most intimate associates. It is well to remember these facts 
when Jesus is later asked about the legality of payment of trib- 
ute to Caesar. 


‘Luke 6:17. 


72 JESUS THE Man 


far as it affected the present lives of those who 
heard him. 

This address, preserved for us by one of those 
happy strokes of good fortune which go so far to 
support those who find a satisfaction in believing 
that God operates by special dispensation, was in- 
tended to be a statement to those who had accepted 
his doctrine of the Kingdom, of the principles ac- 
cording to which their lives must be lived if they 
were to be able to participate in the coming King- 
dom of God. It contained a system of morals suit- 
able to a people who believed that they were shortly 
to stand in the immediate presence of God, and that 
their hope for safety from condemnation and for 
participation in the promises of this Kingdom de- 
pended upon their bringing forth in their lives 
fruits worthy of that hope. 

This discourse, under the name of ‘‘The Sermon 
on the Mount,’’ has become the most cherished pos- 
session of the western world.’ 

Jesus at this time was at the height of the power 
and vigor of his preaching. As yet he was not 
seriously disturbed by any contradiction or antago- 
nism. Dominated as he was with the absolute assur- 
ance that the day was immediately at hand when 
all present human institutions and human relations 
would pass away and human beings would stand in 
the presence of the Most High with only their own 


‘The complete form is found in Matthew, chapters 5-7. The 
Lucan parallel is found in chapter 6. Parts of the sections omit- 
ted by Luke are scattered through other chapters of that gospel. 


THe Great Discourses at CAPERNAUM to 


righteous personalities to save them from destruc- 
tion and to give them participation in the joy of the 
presence of God, his moral ideas were based upon a 
sense of true values not possible to one governed by 
ordinary motives, and had a vivid insight and a 
limpid clarity such as have been vouchsafed to no 
other man. The Sermon on the Mount continues to 
this day to be the greatest ethical and religious docu- 
ment ever produced. In five wonderful verses of 
the sixth chapter of Matthew, known in all Christian 
lands as ‘‘the Lord’s prayer,’’ he enunciated the 
essence of all true religious life, an ideal of religious 
attitude which has been the goal for which all devout 
souls have striven ever since. This discourse was the 
high mark not only of Jesus’ own religious teach- 
ing, but of the world’s religious history. 

Jesus finished his discourse, and returned to his 
home in Capernaum. Whatever the danger which 
had caused him to be so cautious the previous night, 
it had passed. The multitude which had _ sur- 
rounded him, everwhelmed with the wonder of his 
message and his personality, filled with hope and 
delight with his power to relieve suffering and to 
soothe the disordered mind, hung upon his steps as 
they had hung upon his words. They crowded about 
his house to such an extent that none of the proced- 
ure of normal life was possible. Jesus and his fol- 
lowers could not even partake of food because of the 
crowd that pressed into his presence.’ 


®Mark 3:19-20. 


14 JESUS THE Man 


Jesus had friends in Capernaum who had known 
him in the days before he went to John and experi- 
enced his vision. They were mystified by the tre- 
mendous change in him. This extraordinary pro- 
cedure upon his part, his preaching and healing, his 
gathering to himself of a body of personal followers 
and close companions, the presence of the multitude 
that pressed about him and would not be dispersed, 
seemed to some of them who had not been swept off 
their feet by the message which he preached, the 
marks of fanaticism and mental disturbance. His 
purpose they could not determine, but his actions 
were ominous. They knew clearly from the experi- 
ences of Judas and of John what were the dangers 
incident to such demonstrations, and feared for the 
result to him. They said ‘‘He is beside himself’’ 
and attempted to approach him to take him out of 
reach of the crowds which, they thought, were turn- 
ing his head.’ But the multitude was such that they 
could not do it. Then came his mother and his 
brothers, perhaps influenced by those friends who 
could not see a favorable end for the procedure he 
was following. They, too, were unable to press 
through the crowd to him so they stood without, 
ealling to him. The press was such that Jesus 
himself was unaware of their presence, so that one 
brought the message through the multitude to him, 
‘*Your mother and your brothers are outside seek- 
ing for you.’’ 


"Mark 3:21. 


SMark 3:31-35; Matthew 12:46-50; Luke 8:19-21, 


THE Great Discourses at CAPERNAUM 15D 


The exaltation which possessed him, the inspira- 
tion of his great conception and the joy in the sense 
of successful performance of the duty which had 
come upon him, were so great that none of these in- 
fluences had any effect upon him. All other consid- 
erations had now become of small moment to him. 
The relationships, the motives and the values of this 
world had ceased to be of weight with him who 
thought only in terms of the relationships and the 
values of the new world which was about to appear. 
Even the ties of friendship and of family had be- 
come submerged in a broader and deeper love for 
his race. His love for those who loved God had ab- 
sorbed all his power of affection, his total capacity 
for love. 

To him who repeated the message to him, he said: 
‘*Who is my mother and my brother?’’ Looking 
round on them that sat about him he said, ‘‘ Behold 
my mother and my brother; for whosoever shall do 
the will of God, he is my brother and my sister and 
my mother.’’ All human ties were cast behind him 
as he set his face towards the fulfillment of what he 
thought to be his duty as the Son of God. 

With his closest relatives and his friends believ- 
ing that he was beside himself, failing to recognize 
the truth of his message, seeking to gain possession 
of him to save him from the consequences of his ap- 
parent obsession, it is not strange that the Phari- 
sees, estranged from him, hostile because of his law- 
breaking tendencies and teachings, should have 
found an unfriendly explanation of what he was do- 


76 JESUS THE Man 


ing. Failure to engage the immediate action of 
Herod’s government did not in the least decrease 
their hostile interest. Information of the extraordi- 
nary events occurring in Galilee had gone to Jeru- 
salem, and the rulers of the Pharisees had sent ob- 
servers to investigate the report. The lawyers 
whom they sent’, as they saw the wonderful effects 
of Jesus’ personality upon the crowd, did not find 
themselves able to contradict the facts. They saw 
the demoniacs soothed, the disturbed minds rendered 
normal and calm; the fact was beyond their contra- 
diction. They had the only explanation available in 
their time as to the cause of these disorders; they 
were the result of demoniac possession. It was ob- 
vious to them that the demons were actually cast out 
of these afflicted people, but as to how this was ac- 
complished they had another explanation. To Jesus 
and to the multitude of those who followed him, it 
was a revelation of the very presence of God; they 
believed that by the power of God, given to him in an 
extraordinary degree, he cast out these demons and 
made them subject to him. But to these Pharisee 
lawyers, who knew that Jesus himself broke the law 
(the ritualistic law as they taught it, which they be- 
lieved to be absolutely valid), it was inconceivable 
that this man could be wielding the power of God. 
This man was a breaker of the law; God could not be 
with him. But how then to explain these facts? 
There was only one other authority to whom these 


*Mark 3:22 ff; Matthew 12:24 ff. 


THe Great Discourses AT CAPERNAUM tf 


demons were subject, the authority of the prince of 
the demons themselves. The conclusion was logi- 
cal and irresistible, given their beliefs to start from; 
this man must be possessed by Beelzebub, the prince 
of all the devils, and by his authority he cast them 
out. 

Information of these statements by the lawyers 
was brought to Jesus. His answer is extremely in- 
teresting, as it shows not merely the logic with which 
he demolished their explanation, but also reveals 
his own idea of the meaning of the wonders which 
accompanied his teaching: 

“Every kingdom divided against itself, is brought to 
desolation; and every city or house divided against itself 
will not stand; and if Satan casteth out Satan, he is di- 
vided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand? 
And if 1 by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your 


sons cast them out? But if I by the spirit of God cast out 
demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you.” 


To him, as to hig enthusiastic followers, these ex- 
traordinary phenomena of healing which accom- 
panied his preaching were conclusive proof that the 
spirit of God was working among them, and if this 
was true, the prophecies were being fulfilled, the de- 
mons were again subject to the power of God, and 
the Kingdom of Heaven was truly at hand. 

Jesus did not take this attack kindly, nor endure it 
without resentment. The intense nature which re- 
vealed itself in his absorption in his great con- 
viction carried with it capacity for deep and 
violent emotions. His excoriation of those lawyers 
which followed was astonishing in its suddenness 


78 JESUS THE MAn 


and its bitterness and reveals something of the depth 
of passion and indignation of which he was capable. 
Already these Pharisees and lawyers had placed him 
in serious danger by their attempt to involve him 
with Herod, and now their new attack seemed to him 
an attack upon that very spirit of God upon which he 
was relying, and aroused his deepest resentment. 
He said: | 


“T say unto you, every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiv- 
en unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall 
not be forgiven. And whosoever speaketh a word against 
the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever 
speaketh against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven 
him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come. 

“Hither make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else 
make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt; for the tree 
is known by the fruit. Ye offspring of vipers, how can ye, 
being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance 
of the heart the mouth speaketh. The good man out of his 
good treasure bringeth forth good things; and the evil 
man out of his evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. 
And I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall 
speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judg- 
ment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by 
thy words thou shalt be condemned.” 


Immediately afterward, on the same day, Jesus 
again went out by the seaside and the multitudes, 
still hanging upon his words, again gathered about 
him in immense numbers. Unable to speak to them 
in comfort upon the shore because of their close 
crowding about him, he again entered a boat and 
pushed out a little distance into the sea. Continuing 
the teaching of the previous day, he began to tell 
them many things about the coming Kingdom. This 


Tue Great Discourses at CAPERNAUM 79 


time his language was entirely figurative. One of 
the parables in particular deserves attention be- 
cause of the clearness with which he stated his econ- 
ception of the crisis which was approaching the 
world and the terribleness of the condemnation 
which confronted those who were not fit for a place 
in the Kingdom :* 

‘Another parable set he before them saying, The king- 
dom of heaven is likened unto a man that sowed good seed 
in his field. But while men slept, his enemy came and 
sowed tares also among the wheat, and went away. But 
when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, 
then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the house- 
holder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow 
good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? 
He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The ser- 
vants say unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather 
them up? But he saith, Nay; lest while ye gather up the 
tares, ye root up the wheat with them. Let both grow 
together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest 
I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the tares, and 
bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat 
into my barn.” 

“Then he left the multitudes, and went into the house: 
and his disciples came unto him, saying, Explain unto 
us the parable of the tares of the field. And he answered 
and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the 
Son of Man; and the field is the world; the good seed, 
these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the 
sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is 
the devil; and the harvest is the end of the world; and 
the reapers are the angels. 

As therefore the tares are gathered up and burned with 
fire, so shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of 
Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather 
out of his kingdom all things that cause stumbling and 


* Matthew 13 :24-30, 36-43, 47-50. 


80 JESUS THE MAN 


them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into the fur- 
nace of fire; there shall be the weeping and the gnashing 
of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun 
in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, 
let him hear.” 

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that 
was cast into the sea and gathered of every kind: which, 
when it was full, they drew up on the beach, and sat 
down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the 
bad away. So shall it be in the end of the world: the 
angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among 
the righteous, and shall cast them into the furnace of 
fire; there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of 
teeth.” 


Judging from another of the parables of that day, 
he was already experiencing the unreliability of the 
erowds. The fact that he spoke in parables was a 
change from his custom and disturbed his disciples. 
It is also significant to us, as is his answer when 
they asked him his reason for so doing. ‘‘Therefore 
I speak to them in parables, because seeing they see 
not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they un- 
derstand.’”” The parable of the seed which fell upon 
the rocky ground and sprang up straightway but 
quickly withered in the heat of the risen sun, which 
he interpreted as ‘‘he that heareth the word and 
straightway with joy receiveth it, yet *** when tribu- 
lation or persecution ariseth *** straightway he 
stumbleth’”’—this shows what he wag experiencing 
under the growing pressure of the displeasure and 
opposition of the Pharisees and the attempt to in- 


“Matthew 13:11-18; Mark 4:11-12; Luke 8:10. 
“Matthew 13:3-9, 18-23; Mark 4:3-9, 138-20; Luke 8:5-8, 11-15. 


THe Great Discourses at CAPERNAUM 81 


volve him with Herod. Memories of the uprising of 
Judas and its consequent miseries, little more than 
twenty years before, were still fresh and the sudden 
enthusiasm could not stand the strain of the appre- 
hension of their repetition. It was such as these, 
and those whose desire it was to cause him trouble 
and who were probably present, as so often occurred 
with him, to find an excuse upon which they might 
accuse him, for whom he intended ‘‘that seeing they 
may see, and not perceive, and hearing they may 
hear, and not understand.’’ Already it was becom- 
ing difficult for him to publish his message openly. 

The continuous pressure of this multitude was ex- 
ceeding his powers of endurance. For several days 
he had been practically without rest and without 
quiet. A change was imperative. So at the end of 
the day instead of attempting to return to Caper- 
naum where a repetition of the experience of the day 
before was definitely to be expected, he and his dis- 
ciples rowed directly across the lake where they 
would be out of reach of the crowd.” 

On the way they met one of those violent wind 
storms characteristic of the evening on the Sea of 
Galilee at that time of the year. Jesus himself was 
weary from his day of teaching and contact with 
the multitude, and was asleep in the stern of the 
boat. The waves and the wind grew dangerous; 
the water began to beat into the open boat and his 
companions began to fear that it would founder. 


BMatthew 8:18 23-27; Mark 4:35-41; Luke 8:22-25, 


82 JESUS THE Man 


For awhile they labored in the storm but becoming 
convinced of their extreme danger they awoke Jesus, 
to inform him of the danger in which they stood. 
But he refused to share their fears. His yet un- 
shaken confidence in the importance of his mission 
and of his personality caused him to be assured 
that the elements contained no threat to him, The 
sudden summer tempest passed; he turned to the 
twelve and said ‘‘Why were you afraid? Do you 
not yet have faith?’’ 

The amazed disciples, who during the previous 
days had seen events which they had believed im- 
possible, observing his calm assurance and complete 
absence of fear in the presence of what seemed to 
them extreme danger, believed that this passing of 
the tempest also had occurred because of the com- 
mand of Jesus. They looked upon him with awe 
and growing fear and said one to another ‘‘ What 
manner of man is this? even the wind and the sea 
obey him.’’ The opinion of his personality which 
was later to ripen into the conviction that he could 
be nothing else than the Anointed of God, and still 
later into the opinion that he was God himself, was 
already taking possession of these men. 

Upon their arrival at the eastern side of the lake, 
the territory called the country of the Gerasenes, 
adjacent to the little city of Gerasa," he was immedi- 


“Mark 5:1-20; Matthew 8:28-34; Luke 8:26-39. The place 
has been identified as the group of ruins now called Khersa. 
The difference in names between Mark and Luke on the one 
hand and Matthew on the other, who calls it Gadara, is ex- 


Tue Great Discourses at CAPERNAUM 83 


ately met by a demoniac of extraordinarily violent 
character, whose disordered mind he soothed and 
calmed. The healing of this man had two effects; it 
aroused the fear and the hostility of the people of 
that section, who believed that in healing the man he 
had destroyed a herd of swine, and insisted that 
Jesus leave their country; and it sent the man, with 
his sanity restored, out among the people of all that 
section telling the story of the extraordinary thing 
which Jesus had done for him. A few months later 
this was to furnish its results in the multitude which 
came out of this section to follow Jesus into Jerusa- 
lem. 

Under the circumstances his stay there was brief 
and in a very short time, probably the next morn- 
ing, he returned across the sea to Capernaum, There 
they found the multitude, still largely undispersed, 
waiting for him, again thronging about him on the 
shore as he left the boat. Then followed a circum- 
stance, of small meaning in itself, but greatly magni- 
fied by the reports which carried it swiftly from 
mouth to mouth throughout that section.” 

Jairus, one of the chief men of the Jewish com- 
munity, came pressing through the crowd to Jesus, 
telling him that his little daughter lay sick to the 
point of death and begging that he come to her and 
lay his hands upon her and heal her. Jesus with his 


plained by the probability that the village of Gerasa was includ- 
ed in the territory appurtenant to the larger city of Gadara, a 
few miles to the southeast. 


Mark 5:22-43; Luke 8:41-56; Matthew 9:18-26. 


84 JESUS THE MANn 


companions followed the ruler of the synagogue, 
pressing their way through the crowd which sur- 
rounded them so closely that they could make little 
headway. When they were stopped on their way 
by a woman, whose faith in his healing power cured 
a disorder upon her merely by taking hold upon 
his garments, servants of the ruler made their 
way to their master and said to him ‘* Your daughter 
is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?”’ 

Comforting the stricken father with an expression 
of hope, Jesus proceeded nevertheless to his home, 
where he found the household engaged in the tumul- 
tuous procedure of a Jewish mourning. When he 
entered and looked at the child he saw that she was 
not in truth dead, but that their fears had given rise 
to their conclusion that she was dead. He said to 
them, ‘*Why do ye weep and make tumult? The 
child is not dead, but asleep.’’ Despite their disbe- 
hef in his assurance, he proceeded to send everybody 
out of the room except her father and her mother 
and his own followers. Then taking her by the hand, 
he said to the child, ‘‘Damsel, arise.’’ The touch 
and words roused her and she arose. 

A great astonishment came upon all of them, for 
they were certain that she was dead. He was unwill- 
ing that this mistaken statement of it should go out 
and cautioned them particularly to say nothing about 
it but to take care of the child. Nevertheless, the 
story quickly spread abroad, and no doubt expanded 
and exaggerated, sped through the multitude and 
throughout the country as an addition to the body of 


He Leaves CAPpERNAUM 85 


rumor and imagination which was already making 
of this truly wonderful man a being surpassing the 
capacity of a man. 

Capernaum had become a place where it was im- 
possible for him to live in peace. The reputation 
of his teaching and of his wonderful work of heal- 
ing had now gone so far abroad and people from 
every direction in all parts of Palestine were travel- 
ing to him to such an extent that neither peace nor 
rest were possible to him, nor, indeed, to the resi- 
dents of that little city, which had become overrun 
with a multitude far exceeding its capacity to care 
for them. Besides, his conception of his mission 
made it necessary that his message be preached also 
to those who dwelt in other parts of Galilee. We 
have no record of how he left the multitude at this 
time, or why it dispersed, but he now departed from 
Capernaum. 

But it is extremely likely that at this time the an- 
tagonism of the Pharisees and their complaints to 
Herod’s representatives, together with the confusion 
caused by the assembling of the immense excited 
crowds, had resulted in the activity of the local au- 
thorities, and that his removal from the scene of his 
greatest successes was not altogether voluntary. We 
observe in his later denunciation of the city a bitter- 
ness of feeling which he showed only in the face of 
strong opposition, which, up until now, he had not 
found in his home city :” 


*Matthew 11 :23-24, 


86 JESUS THE Man 


“And thou, Capernaum, shalt thou be exalted unto 
heaven? thou shalt go down to Hades; for if the mighty 
works, which have been done in thee, had been done in 
Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say 
unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of 
Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.” 


We find no more crowds surging about him in 
Capernaum, and when he again enters the city, once 
only and then for only a short while, he makes no 
public appearance whatever, and takes special pre- 
caution to keep his presence secret.’ Also, since up 
to this time he had had no positive conflict with 
the government, his warning to Capernaum leaves a 
very direct inference that unfriendly action was 
now taken against him and that both he and his mul- 
titude either were practically thrust out as a source 
of trouble, or left the city in the interest of personal 
safety. 


WMark 9:30-38. 


CHAPTER VII. 


At NazaretH—T'He Tour THroucH GALILEE 


From Capernaum he went to the little city of 
Nazareth where he had spent his youth and from 
which place he had departed at that memorable time 
when he submitted to the baptism of John and ex- 
perienced the vision that completely changed his 
life. People of Nazareth remembered him as a man 
who only a few months before had been one of them; 
a gifted man, perhaps, but whom it had never oc- 
curred to them to consider as so extraordinary and 
superior to all of them as the stories now circulated 
about him would indicate. His life from his boy- 
hood had been lived among them; the stories which 
now reached them concerning the marvellous things 
he was doing in the region about the Sea of Galilee 
found no corresponding belief in them. ‘T'o those 
who had known him intimately for years in his daily 
occupation and conversation, the incidents now nar- 
rated about him by the awestruck people who had 
fallen under his influence were unbelievable. 

The account of his experience there, as given by 
Luke, circumstantial and vivid, is interesting in | 
the extreme. It is characteristic of his method of 
reaching the people throughout Galilee both before 
and after this event. It shows him going into the 
synagogue, the common gathering place of the Jews 

[87] 


88 JESUS THE Man 


upon the Sabbath, taking advantage of the custom- 
ary opportunity given to any one who had a message 
to the people to present it, and preaching to these 
people an interpretation of the prophecy of Isaiah, 
which supported his message that the Kingdom was 
near at hand: 


“And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought 
up: and he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue 
on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there was 
delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And 
he opened the book, and found the place where it was 
written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he 
anointed me to preach to the poor; he hath sent me to 
proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight 
to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to 
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed 
the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. 
And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on 
him. And he began to say unto them, This day hath this 
scripture been fulfilled in your ears.” 


His wonderful earnestness, the assurance with 
which he spoke, the appeal of the message which 
he brought, amazed these neighbors, men and wo- 
men who only a few months ago had been his inti- 
mate associates. They could hardly believe their 
senses. Was this man really the man whom they 
had known so intimately for so many years? They 
began to say to one another—‘‘Ts not this Joseph’s 
son?’’ 

As they realized that after all it was really their 
former neighbor, the astonishment gave place to in- 
dignation at the pretension involved in his immense 


‘Luke 4:16-30; Mark 6:1-6; Matthew 13 :54-58. 


At NAZARETH 89 


assurance. Since he was truly Jesus, the son of 
Joseph, whence had he right or authority to be mak- 
ing these extravagant promises and announcing the 
future with such confidence? What right did he have 
to identify himself with the great personage of 
Isaiah’s prophecy? They began again to say to 
each other, ‘‘Whence is the wisdom which this 
man hath—whence the mighty works of which we 
hear? Is not this the carpenter, the carpenter’s 
son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his 
brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 
And his sisters, are they not all here with us? 
Whence does he have all these things?’’ Instead of 
believing his message, they were angered at his as- 
sumption of wisdom and authority before them, who 
knew him so well. 

He saw the resentment he had aroused. 

“And he said unto them, Doubtless, ye will say unto me 
this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we 
have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thine own 
country. And he said, Verily I say unto you, no prophet 
is acceptable in his own country. But I tell you of a 
truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, 
when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, 
when there came a great famine over all the land, and un- 
to none of them was Elias sent, save unto Zarephath of 
Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were 
many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha, the prophet; 
and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman, the 
Syrian.” 

The inference contained in this statement was 
obvious. He eonveyed to them that God’s grace in 
the past had not been shown to all his people, but 


90 JESUS THE MANn 


had come only to those who were fit for it, to those 
who had a faith which made the power of God avail- 
able. Since the people of Nazareth did not have this 
faith, the wonders he had done in Capernaum would 
not be repeated among them. They were not fit for 
the blessing of God. 

In an atmosphere such as surrounded him there, 
the healing power which had astonished Capernaum 
failed to operate. The awe and reverence which per- 
mitted his suggestion to dominate the minds and 
bodies of those who believed him to be gifted with 
supernatural powers were lacking entirely in those 
who saw him only as the carpenter, whose life had 
all been spent among them. A few of the sick at the 
little city had been sufficiently influenced by the 
stories which had preceded his coming that they be- 
heved in his power and were relieved, but on the 
whole his appearance in his home was a disappoint- 
ment both to him and to the people who had heard 
so much of his wonderful doings in Capernaum. 

This disappointment and resentment became 
steadily greater as the people thought of the preten- 
sions with which he had appeared before them. To 
them his claim of prophetic power was a vicious im- 
position and his explanation of his failure to perform 
the wonders they had expected on the ground that 
they were not fit to receive the blessing of God was 
an insolent affront. Their indignation waxed hot; 
they were not restrained by any belief in his super- 
natural capacity and they laid violent hands upon 
him, thrust him forth from the town and would have 


At NAZARETH 91 


cast him over the precipice near their city. Perhaps 
with the assistance of his companions, who had fol- 
lowed him from Capernaum, and who eame to his 
rescue when the danger became serious, perhaps 
through his own prowess, fully exerted when it be- 
came necessary, he freed himself from the grasp of 
his angered townsmen and went his way to another 
village, marvelling that they had failed to believe. 
His astonishment was natural, for this was the first 
community into which he had gone where his mes- 
sage had not been received with eagerness and where 
the people had not flocked to accept the healing 
blessings which accompanied him. 

Then began a journey which led him’ through 
many of the cities and villages of Galilee, preaching 
the welcome tidings of the coming of the Kingdom of 
God.’ No doubt the procedure was similar to that 
followed at Nazareth. Every community had its 
synagogue, its place where all the Jews gathered and 
could readily be addressed in crowds at almost any 
time. Thither he went, there he read the scriptures 
and interpreted them, announcing their fulfillment 
and the early coming of the Kingdom. The difference 


This incident, considered with the great power of sugges- 
tion which he exercised, which is rarely possessed by any ex- 
cept persons of dominating physical appearance, lends ground to 
the inference that Jesus was probably a man of unusual stature 
and commanding appearance, with great, physical strength. Such 
a fact would also explain the statement “he could not be hid,” 
in Mark 7:24, and might have something to do with the effect 
his appearance had upon John the Baptizer. See note 12, p. 29. 


3Mark 6:6; Mathew 9:85; Luke 8:1-38. 


92 JESUS THE Man 


in response from that at Nazareth, however, must 
have been great. All Galilee, aroused by the preach-. 
ing of Jesus and his healing wonders, reports of 
which had been spread before him throughout all 
this country, was already in a ferment and, not re- 
strained by the memory of previous personal con- 
tact and consequent doubt of his authority as were 
those of Nazareth, ready to accept the good tidings 
as he announced them. 

With him went the twelve, daily becoming more 
and more saturated with the message, daily, as they 
saw the wonders of healing which he performed 
upon the suffering people who flocked, to him, more 
and more convinced of his authority and of his 
supernatural power. Rapidly they were becoming 
prepared for the task which he was about to lay 
upon them. With them also went several women, 
who had been healed of infirmities and mental dis- 
turbances by faith in Jesus’ healing power: Mary, 
a woman of Magdala, who had been healed again 
and again of a mental disturbance which probably 
returned upon her as soon as she lost the soothing 
influence of Jesus’ immediate presence; Susanna, 
of whom we have no other information; and Joanna, 
2, woman of important position, the wife of Chuza, 
the steward or treasurer of Herod, and others, un- 
named.” 

This little procession which walked from city to 
village, from village to city throughout Galilee, con- 


‘Luke 8:1-3. 


THe Four THrovucH GALILEE 93 


stituted a most extraordinary little society of its 
own. Convinced of the approaching end of the world 
with which they were surrounded, they had lost all 
interest in the ordinary affairs of life. They were 
without occupation other than the preaching of the 
coming of the Kingdom, and were consequently with- 
out income. Their only means of support was the 
generosity of these women, whose gratitude and 
whose delight in the words of Jesus caused them to 
finance the physical needs of the little group. Inas- 
much as Joanna was not likely to have been per- 
mitted to accompany the expedition without the con- 
sent of her husband, which consent would have been 
very improbable had Chuza himself not believed the 
message of the Kingdom, it is interesting to specu- 
late whether the treasury of Herod himself may not 
at least indirectly have been the source of part of 
the funds which sustained the preacher and his com- 
panions.’ 

The response to his preaching was not without dis- 
appointment to him. Indeed, it is likely that it must 
have been in many instances tremendously disap- 
pointing. True, the people crowded about him to be 
healed by him; they listened eagerly to the words 
of promise which he spoke to them; but the repent- 
ance, the change of heart, which he sought and which 
he desired above all things from those who heard 
him, was conspicuously lacking. No doubt in the 
course of his preaching a tremendous number of 


3It was probably during this period that the incident described 


94 JESUS THE MAN 


people came within reach of his influence, drawn 
from all over Palestine. But the people for the 
most part accepted his benefits, listened to his words, 
recognized him as a good man and a prophet and 
then, not sufficiently lifted out of themselves to 
cause them to forget the unsubstantiality of such a 
hope, went on their way about their ordinary af- 
fairs. Of the numbers who listened to his words, 
the percentage that accepted and acted upon them 
was all too small. We recall his words in the Sermon 
on the Mount ‘* Narrow is the gate and straightened 
the way, that leads unto life, and few are they that 
find it.’? We find him at another time bitterly up- 
braiding the cities in which his greatest wonders 
were performed: 


“Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! 
for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been 
done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long 
ago in sackcloth and ashes. ButI say unto you, it shall 
be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judg- 
ment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art 
exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for 
if the mighty works which have been done in thee had 
been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this 
day. But I say unto you that it shall be more tolerable 
for the land of Sodom in the day! of judgment, than for 
thee.” 

And from this time appears a new note in his 


preaching, manifesting a consciousness that ke has 


in Luke 7:11-17 occurred. This was the supposed raising 
from the dead of the widow’s son at Nain. The circumstances 
are very similar to the raising of the daughter of Jairus, and 
the essence of the event probably identical with that of the 
Capernaum “raising from the dead.” 


*Matthew 11 :20-24. 


Tue Tour THrovucH GALILEE 95 


been criticised, opposed, attacked, and that his mis- 
sion may not be without personal danger to himself 
and his followers. 

Those who did accept him were for the most part 
the poor, the ignorant, the unlearned; the practical, 
intelligent, and substantial part of the population 
gave him the hearing of eager curiosity, but with 
but few exceptions refused to be dominated by his 
tremendous enthusiasm. All of them desired that 
which he announced to be about to come to pass; 
all of them hoped for it at some time; perhaps a 
large percentage of them were influenced by his 
profound confidence, his wonderful words and his 
marvellous healing capacity to believe that it was 
near at hand; but few of the practical and well bal- 
anced part of the population were able to follow 
him in the practical application of his ideas. The 
present was too real to them, too valuable, to be lost 
sight of in the glittering promise of a glorious fu- 
ture, immediate though the promise might be. But 
the unlearned and poverty stricken, those to whom 
this life furnished little and promised no more, were 
far readier to accept the hope which he held out to 
them, and to abandon a present which had little 
value to them for a future which promised the hap- 
piness which reality denied them. A glimpse of the 
appeal which moved that ignorant, suffering popu- 
lation to its very depths is given in his words uttered 
at this period of his preaching :’ 


"Matthew 11 :25-30. 


96 JESUS THE Man 


“At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, 
O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because thou hast 
hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast 
revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father; for so it 
seemed good in thy sight. Come unto me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
yoke upon you, and learn of me; for J] am meek and lowly 
in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For 
my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” 


The need of the people with whom he came in 
contact moved Jesus profoundly. Sick and suffer- 
ing, standing as he believed in the shadow of an 
event which was of supreme and eternal importance 
to them, ignorant and heedless of the danger in which 
they stood, countless in numbers so that the impos- 
sibility of his reaching them all in time was apparent 
and overwhelming, his heart went out to them in 
deep compassion. They seemed to him wandering 
in danger, scattered, with no one to guide them, no 
one to warn them; as sheep astray without a shep- 
herd. He said to his companions, ‘‘The harvest in- 
deed is plenteous but the laborers are few; pray ye, 
therefore, the lord of the harvest that he send forth 
laborers to the harvest.’” If all these multitudes 
were to be warned to flee from the wrath to come, he 
must have help; he could not possibly do it alone. 


’Matthew 9 :36-38. 


CHAPTER VIII 


SENDING OF THE TWELVE 


The Twelve had now been with him long enough 
and were fully enough advised of the nature of his 
message that they could be called upon to help him. 
Oppressed with the conviction that time was moving 
too swiftly and that speedy action was absolutely 
necessary if any considerable part of this sinful 
population was to be saved, Jesus now divided up 
the Twelve into six groups and started them through- 
out the villages to bring the message to those whom 
he himself was unable to reach. 

The Jewish cast of his conception of the Kingdom 
at that time, its immediate nearness, the uselessness 
of any practical considerations in the expectation of 
its early appearance, the bitterness of the condem- 
nation which he believed to await those who re- 
fused to hear his message, and his realization of 
the impossibility that the rich and powerful could ac- 
cept it are all plainly apparent in the instructions 
which he gave to the Twelve as he sent them out: 


“These twelve Jesus sent forth, and charged them say- 
ing, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and enter not 
into any city of the Samaritans: but go rather to the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, say- 
ing, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, 


1Matthew 10:5-23. Cf. Mark 6:8-11; Luke 9:5-5. 
[97] 


98 JESUS THE MAN 


raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely 
ye received, freely give. Get you no gold, nor silver, nor 
brass in your purses, no wallet for your journey, neither 
two coats, nor shoes, nor staff: for the laborer is worthy 
of his food. And into whatsoever city or village ye shall 
enter, search out who in it is worthy; and there abide till 
ye go forth. And as you enter into the house, salute it. 
And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it, 
but if it be not worthy,*let your peace return to you. And 
whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, as 
ye go forth out of that house or that city, shake off the 
dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more 
tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day 
of judgment, than for that city. 


Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: 
be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. 
But beware of men: flor they will deliver you up to coun- 
cils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you; yea, 
and before governors and kings shall ye be brought for 
my sake, for a testimony to them and the Gentiles. But 
when they deliver you up, be not anxious how or what 
ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that hour 
what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the 
Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you. And brother 
shall deliver up brother to death, and the father his child: 
and children shall rise up against parents and cause them 
to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for 
my name’s Sake: but he that endureth to the end, the same 
shall be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, 
flee into the next: for verily I say unto you, ye shall not 
have gone through the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man 
be come.” 


Apparently at this time his expectation was that 
the appearance of the Kingdom was of daily, almost 
hourly, probability. Recalling the experience of 
John the Baptist, as well as his own troubles at 
Capernaum, he continued by calling attention to the 


SENDING OF THE T'WELVE 99 


dangers which they should undergo, with the promise 
of full reward for persistence through them :’ 


“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant 
above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be 
as his teacher, and the servant as his lord. If they have 
called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much 
more them of his household! Fear them not therefore: 
for there is nothing covered, that shall not be re- 
vealed; and hid, that shall not be known. What I tell you 
in the darkness, speak ye in the light: and what ye hear in 
the ear, proclaim upon the house tops. And be not afraid 
of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the 
soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both 
soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for 
a penny? and not one of them shall fall on the ground 
without your Father. But the very hairs of your head 
are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more 
value than many sparrows. Everyone therefore who shall 
confess me before men, him I also confess before my 
Father who is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me 
before men, him I will also deny before my Father who 
is in heaven.” 


Perhaps a reflection of his disappointment in the 
attitude of his own family towards him is to be seen 
in his explanation of the disturbance which would 
necessarily follow upon his teachings: 


“Think not that I came to send peace on earth: I 
came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to 
set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter 
against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her 
mother-in-law: and a man’s foes shall be they of his own 
household. He that loveth father or mother more than me 
is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter 
more than me is not worthy of me. And he that doth not 


*Matthew 10 :24-39. 


100 JESUS THE Man 


take his cross, and follow after me, is not worthy of me. 
He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth 
his life for my sake shall find it.’” 

As the Twelve departed on their mission, Jesus 
with the remainder of his little company continued 
through other villages, still preaching his good tid- 
ings.” 

By this time information of what was occurring 
in Galilee had penetrated even within the prison 
walls which restrained John the Baptizer. Some of 
the disciples of John who continued to have access 
to him brought him word of this new preacher whose 
message was the same as John’s, and whose words 
were supported by unheard-of wonders of healing.’ 

John was absolutely convinced of the truth of 
his own message of the immediate coming of the 
Kingdom. His expectation looked forward to the 
coming of one after him whose power was to be far 
greater than his own. Was this man, concerning 
whom these marvellous stories were brought to him, 
in truth John’s successor, the true forerunner of 
the coming Kingdom? Deeply anxious and desiring 
to be relieved of uncertainty he asked some of his 


*Verses 38 and 39 are evidently of later origin. The refer- 
ence to the cross could have been made only after the event had 
given significance to the cross; to this extent the language has 
certainly been modified by the ideas of the early Christians who 
preserved it. V. 39 is taken from Jesus’ great call for followers 
to go with him to Jerusalem after Caesarea Philippi, as recorded 
by Mark 8:35. 


‘Matthew 11:1. 
STuke 7:18-35; Matthew 11:2-19. 


SENDING OF THE T'WELVE 101 


visiting disciples to go to Jesus with the message— 
** Are you the one who should come or must we look 
for another?’’ 

The messengers found Jesus in one of the Galilean 
villages, surrounded by the afflicted, many of whom 
were healed of their sickness and their disorders in 
the presence of the messengers from John. This 
was a question Jesus could not answer directly with- 
out revealing to those about him the secret he had 
carried locked up in his own consciousness since that 
fateful day at the fords of the Jordan. Yet he did 
not wish to leave John’s inquiry unanswered. He 
said to the messengers, ‘‘Go and tell John what you 
have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, 
the dead are raised, the poor have good tidings 
preached to them, and blessed is he who shall find 
no occasion of stumbling in me.’’ 

The reference was to a well known Messianic pass- 
age from Isaiah’ and was intended to convey to 
John, who would recognize it and its significance, 
the proof that the Kingdom was indeed near at hand 
and a suggestion as to the meaning of Jesus’ per- 
sonality. Immediately following the departure of 
the messengers, he spoke to the crowds surrounding 
him of the greatness of John and identified him with 
Elijah, the great prophet whose coming must precede 
the actual appearance of the Kingdom.’ The mul- 


Isaiah 35 :3-6. 
"Matthew 11:12, which has caused so much discussion among 


102 JESUS THE MAn 


titude, large numbers of whom had been baptized by 
John, welcomed these statements and his interpreta- 
tions of the meaning of John’s personality, but as 
usual, the Pharisees and lawyers were in the crowd 
and rejected this idea as they had come to reject 
all other phases of Jesus’ preaching. Neither the 
crowds nor the Pharisees seem to have sensed in the 
eryptic reply any indication of Jesus’ own belief that 
he was the Messiah. 

This message must have come just prior to the 
death of John at the hands of Herod. How long 
the 'T'welve were engaged in their journey among the 
towns and villages of Galilee, we cannot tell; it 
could not have been long. In the meantime Jesus 
had continued his own preaching and in some of the 
many villages which crowded Galilee, probably far 
to the north, near Bethsaida, the Twelve presently 
returned to him. 


the commentators— Schweitzer says “it resists all exegesis”’— 
(The Mystery of the Kingdom of God, p. 111) is merely the 
statement that force is being applied to prevent the coming of the 
Kingdom or to those who were seeking to bring it in. It might 
better be translated “From the days of John the Baptizer un- 
til now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and violent 
men overpower it.’”’ This, in regard to John, was a mere state- 
ment of a fact well known to his hearers, and admitting the 
practical certainty that either force or the apprehension of force 
was the cause of his departure from Capernaum, it was just as 
applicable to Jesus and his message of preparation for the King- 
dom, 


CHAPTER IX 


Herop Seeks His Arrest—EHxitrzt From Herop’s 
DoMINIONS 


Up to this point Jesus’ movement had developed 
without serious conflict with the civil authorities. 
The resentment of the Pharisees had not brought 
him into actual conflict with the general government. 
True, their opposition probably had stirred up the 
local authorities and broken up his movement at 
Capernaum, but so far as we know it had stopped 
with that result. We have no record of any attempt 
to arrest him before this time. 

But from this time on he was destined to be in 
continuous personal danger from the government 
under which he lived. Beginning first with astonished 
interest in the stories told about this new prophet 
of the Kingdom, growing out of a vivid memory of 
John the Baptist, the attitude of Herod Antipas, the 
prince to whom he was subject, soon developed to 
bitter and more bitter opposition until finally Herod 
became the dominating factor in Jesus’ death. 

Herod Antipas at this period was tetrarch of 
Galilee and Perea. The latter territory lay to the 
east of the Jordan, extending to the borders of Ara- 
bia and lying to the south of a territory ruled by a 
brother of similar capacity. The exact authority 
which was vested in him under the title of Tetrarch 


[103] 


104 JESUS THE Man 


is not precisely ascertainable, but it is clear that it 
involved in a general way most of the prerogatives 
which were exercised by his father, Herod the Great. 
Both Herod, the father, and his sons Herod Antipas, 
Philip and Archelaus, who jointly inherited his au- 
thority, held that authority by gift of the Roman Sen- 
ate. To Herod the Great was granted complete royal 
power with a general loyalty to the Roman Em- 
pire as sole limitation. His authority throughout the 
area later governed by his sons was complete and ab- 
solute. Herod Antipas was at one time intended by 
his father to be his sole heir. Shortly before his 
death, however, Herod, who in his later years was in 
continual turmoil with his children, became angered 
at Antipas and in a will bequeathed his kingdom to 
Archelaus instead.” But when Archelaus went to 
Rome to receive the confirmation of his authority 
at the hands of the Roman Emperor and the Senate, 
the family and friends of Herod also went and pre- 
sented the claims of Herod Antipas to the throne.’ 
Augustus, after giving the matter full consideration, 
finally divided the kingdom among the three sons,’ 
giving to Archelaus Judea and Idumea with an in- 
come of 400 talents per annum; Galilee and Perea 
to Herod Antipas with 200 talents, and the area to 
the northeast of this territory to Philip with an an- 
nual revenue of 100 talents. This limitation upon 


1Josephus Antiq. XVII, viii, 1. 
"Id. XVII, ix. 
"Id. XVII, xi, 4. 


Herop Seeks His ARREST 105 


the income was apparently the only limitation upon 
the royal authority which they thus inherited, al- 
though the name of king which their father bore was 
withdrawn, Archelaus being called Ethnarch and 
the other two Tetrarchs. Apparently the Roman au- 
thorities retained the prerogative of levying the tax- 
es, with the requirement that these local princes 
should have only the specified amount, the remain- 
der being turned in to the Roman general treasury. 

Herod Antipas accordingly held the power of life 
and death over his subjects, without accountability 
to any other authority whatever, except possibly in 
eases of its great and violent abuse. He seems to 
have been a diligent administrator, who kept his 
unruly subjects well in hand.’ It is obvious that this 
was no easy task. This crowded population, domi- 
nated by a religious idea which was more than half 
political and which led them to believe that any 
authority other than that of God himself as repre- 
sented through their High Priesthood was a usur- 
pation, generally ignorant and emotional to a vol- 
canic degree, stubborn, full of an inherited pride 
of race, filled with a never-ending hope that at some 
time the hand of the oppressor would be withdrawn 
from them and that they should again resume their 
position as a proud and imperial people, were 
enough to try the mettle of the firmest and most com- 
petent government. 


*Archelaus had been deprived of his ethnarchy for such rea- 
sons, See Josephus Antiq. XVII, xiii, 2, 


SJosephus Antiq. XVIII, ii, 3. 


106 JESUS THE Man 


It is evident that any one who kept them in hand 
and maintained the public peace must be quick to 
recognize and prompt to restrain any manifestation 
of public tumult. We have seen already how 
promptly and effectively Herod dealt with the ex- 
citement instituted by John the Baptizer. He did 
not perceive at that time that he had overlooked a 
still more vigorous personality who would take up 
John’s movements where he left it off and make it 
a still more dangerous source of disturbance. The 
work of Jesus until now he had ignored, if in fact he 
had any knowledge of it. The attempts of the Phari- 
sees to cause his officers to take action against 
Jesus at Capernaum because of his violation of the 
Jewish ceremonial law had probably remained a 
local matter. Herod, who had been brought up as 
the son of the king of the Jews, was probably a Jew 
in his religious attitude, but was nevertheless too 
wise a governor to be easily stirred into action by 
a local disturbance over a purely ceremonial ques- 
tion. But the wide reach of this movement devel- 
oped by the operation of the Twelve brought the 
matter to his attention in such a manner that it could 
not be wholly ignored.’ 

The reports of this new excitement brought to him 
by his officers reminded him vividly of his experi- 
ence with John. When the great prophet of the wil- 


*Herod’s presence in Jerusalem during the passover at the 
time of Jesus’ arrest and excution (Luke 23:7) was no doubt 
for the purpose of participating in that religious festival. 


"ark 6:14; Matthew 14:1; Luke 9:7. 


Herop Seeks His ARrrRgEstT 107 


derness was arrested he had been carried to a fort- 
ress owned by Herod on the borders of Arabia.’ There 
he had been held for some time, the purpose of Herod 
apparently being merely to restrain him and thus 
to avoid the turmoil he was raising. Apparently he 
was at times brought before Herod himself in order 
that the ruler might hear his message, to which 
Herod’s Jewish outlook responded to some degree. 
Herod listened to him with interest and pleasure and 
no doubt would have held him safe for some time had 
the personal animosity of his wife not been roused 
against him.’ This woman, evil genius not only of 
John but later of Herod himself,” was Herod’s 


sJosephus Antiq. XVIII, v, 2. 


*The story as told in Mark 6:17-29, Matthew 14:3-12, 1s sup- 
plementary to that told by Josephus in that Josephus gives the 
cause of John’s arrest and the chief reason for his death, while 
Mark, and Matthew after him, give an additional, and perhaps 
the immediate reason for his death. The Josephus story is as 
follows: “Now when others came in crowds about him, for they 
were greatly moved by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest 
the great influence John had over the people might put it into 
his power and inclination to raise a rebellion (for they seemed 
ready to do anything he should advise), thought it best, by 
putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, 
and not bring himself into difficulties by sparing a man who 
might make him repent of it when it should be too late. Ac- 
cordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious tem- 
per, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there 
put to death.” The reasoning reported here was no doubt the 
same as that applied to Jesus by Herod. The writers of the 
gospels, men not acquainted with government, could not under- 
stand political motives, but found the explanation for the acts 
of the authorities in motives that. would have been sufficient to 
persons of their own sphere of existence. To them Herodias’ 
motive was ample to explain what happened to John. 


“Josephus (Antiq. XVIII, vii. Wars II, ix, 6) relates how the 


108 JESUS THE Man 


niece, a grand-daughter of Herod the Great. She had 
earlier been married to his brother Philip,” but had 
abandoned Philip for Antipas. This criminal pro- 
ceeding had aroused the violent antagonism of Her- 
od’s Jewish subjects. Herodias, a woman of pow- 
erful will and personality, apparently was little in- 
fluenced by what her subjects thought. But evi- 
dently during some of these interviews of John the 
Baptizer with Herod, in which no doubt Herodias 
herself was present, John, who always was strenu- 
ously earnest and outspoken, had particularly re- 
buked Herod and Herodias for the crime they had 
committed and were daily perpetuating. The out- 
spoken language touched Herodias at a point on 
which women are especially sensitive and unforgiv- 
ing and aroused in her an antagonism which ceased 
not so long as John was alive. Taking advantage of 
a temporary desire on the part of Herod to grant a 
favor to her daughter who had pleased Herod and 
his company when she danced before them at a ban- 
quet, Herodias had demanded and received from 
Herod the head of John the Baptizer. 

This could have been only a very short time be- 


insistent ambitions of Herodias finally drove Antipas to Rome 
requesting that he be made a king, instead of which he was ban- 
ished to Lyons, where he died. 


“Probably not Philip the tetrarch but another of the numer- 
ous sons of Herod the Great, Herod whose mother was the daugh- 
ter of Simon the high priest and who lived at Rome. Josephus in 
Antiq. XVIII, v. 1, tells the story of the process by which Antipas 
secured her from his brother. Since this brother is called Herod 
by Josephus and Philip by Mark, it is customary to call him 
Herod-Philip, as Herod Antipas was the name of the tetrarch. 


Herop Seeks His Arrest 109 


fore the news came to Herod of this fresh outbreak 
of preaching of the immediate approach of the King- 
dom of God.” The messages which came to him 
were identical in character with the earlier ones 
concerning John. The same reasons which caused 
him to arrest John immediately aroused him to in- 
terest in this new prophet. Even more general in 
scope throughout his dominion was this movement. 
In addition to the teaching of Jesus himself, six pairs 
of men were traveling throughout the cities of the 
tetrarchy, vigorously proclaiming the impending 
end of the world and coming of the Kingdom of God, 
frequently reenforcing their words with wonderful 
cures, giving a reach and a power to the message 
which not even the burning words of John could have 
procured. 

This was no small problem for any government. 
No prince who cared to maintain the public peace 
could permit the continuance of this movement 
among a volatile population such as Herod ruled. It 


“Mark (6:14ff) locates the receipt of information by Herod 
between the time when the twelve went out and their return. No 
mention of the presence of the twelve occurs in the report of the 
message from John to Jesus, and if the philippic against Caper- 
naum, which is placed in immediate connection therewith by 
Matthew, is correctly located there, it took place subsequent to 
Jesus’ departure from Capernaum. Consequently it is extremely 
likely that the messengers from John came while the twelve 
were away on their mission, and it is so located in this study. On 
this basis he would have been alive a bare few days before 
Herod had news of the new preaching. Herod’s immediate asso- 
ciation of it with a risen John indicates that John’s death was 
very fresh in his consciousness, again supporting the idea that 
it was very recent. 


110 JESUS THE Man | 


would be only a little while until these people, filled 
as they were with the centuries-old Messianic hope, 
irritated as they were with the imposition of hated 
taxes, would be worked into a frenzy that would 
end in popular tumult which could be quelled only 
at the expense of much bloodshed. Quite naturally 
Herod desired to put a stop to it. 

Jesus learned of this purpose of Herod’s which 
could only mean personal disaster to himself, be- 
fore the return of the Twelve. Through Joanna, the 
wife of Chuza, Herod’s chief financial officer, he 
had access to the intimate plans of his sovereign, and 
no doubt information of Herod’s intent came to 
him almost as soon as it was decided. When the 
Twelve did return to him at some point near the sea- 
shore, north of Capernaum, full of delight with the 
results of their preaching, announcing that the de- 
mons had been subject to them and obedient to their 
commands, that they had healed the sick in his 
name, and that the word had been heard by many, 
he immediately took them apart to a desolate place, 
out of Herod’s jurisdiction” and consequently out 
of danger from this sudden threat on the part of the 
civil authorities. 

The work of the Twelve had produced its natural 
result. The excitement was again at fever heat. 
Jesus and his disciples in their withdrawal tvok a 
boat and went across the north part of the lake, 
into the mountainous section immediately adjacent 


At this point the Jordan and the sea of Galilee marked the 
eastern border of the dominions of Herod Antipas. 


Herop Seeks His Arrest 111 


to its northeastern shore, near the City of Beth- 
saida.” But the Galilean multitudes who were eager 
to hear him and to experience his healing power, 
foreseeing the place to which he was going, hurried 
around the north end of the lake, no doubt gathering 
many additions from the surrounding villages as 
they went, and were near Jesus’ hiding place almost 
as soon as he and his party arrived there. ‘‘And 
he came forth and saw a great multitude and he 
had compassion on them because they were as sheep 
without a shepherd; and he began to teach them 
many things.’’ At the close of the day he distribut- 
ed among the multitude who were gathered about 
him on the green grass of the hillside what was 
probably a ritualistic meal, symbolic of common 
participation in the coming Kingdom;” perhaps un- 
der the influence of their own belief in his super- 
natural knowledge and power, and the subsequent 


“Mark 6:30-383; Matt 14:18; Luke 9:10-11. 


“This is the explanation given by Schweitzer. (The Mystery of 
the Kingdom of God, 168ff). It is based upon the similarity in 
details with the last supper, except for the exaggeration he be- 
lieves to have grown out ofi the failure of the crowd and even of 
the disciples to understand its true significance, and the conse- 
quent expansion of the tradition into the story of a full meal for 
thousands out of practically nothing. This incident, with that 
recorded in Mark 8:1-10, which is apparently a duplicate of the 
same story grown into a sufficient variant to appear to be a rec- 
ord of a separate event, are the most obscure and uncertain of 
explanation in the whole story of Jesus. The explanation that it 
was an experience of hypnotic nature, is unsatisfying because of 
the large number of persons participating. The Schweitzer explana- 
tion is the most probable. All we can be sure of is that in some 
manner and for some purpose, at the end of a day of teaching of 
the Kingdom, he distributed food among the multitude. 


112 JESUS THE Man 


expansion in the report of the event, the facts were 
later developed in the popular opinion into a story 
of miraculous feeding of the multitude by expanding 
a scanty supply into ample abundance of food. 

At the close of this ceremony he required his dis- 
ciples again to enter the boat and to row up the lake 
shore to Bethsaida, where he would presently come 
after he had sent the multitude away. The already 
powerful conception of his extraordinary power was 
further heightened by an experience of the Twelve 
which followed.” 

After Jesus sent the multitude away he remained 
alone for awhile in meditation. Meanwhile the 
northwest evening wind, which prevails during the 
summer months,’ sprang up with exceptional vio- 
lence. The men in the boat labored at the oar, but 
were unable to make satisfactory headway against 
the direct headwind,—so little in fact that some three 
hours later, when Jesus followed them up the coast 
on foot, he found them still struggling in the wind. 
They were so near to the shore that even in the 
darkness he could see them, probably held close in by 
the violence of the storm. Jesus, thoroughly familiar 
with these waters, walked out in the shallow water 
towards where the boat was laboring in the waves. 
To the startled men, not expecting to see him so, and 


%’Mark 6:45-52; Matthew 14 :22-33. 


“At the northwest part of the lake there is a low point in the 
girdle of hills which encircles it. Through this the diurnal in- 
shore breeze from the Mediterranean sweeps every evening dur- 
ing the summer, sometimes with tempestuous force. 





EXxILE FROM HeErop’s Dominions 113 


already impressed with a sense of his extraordinary 
greatness and control over natural phenomena, he 
seemed in the darkness to be coming to them walk- 
ing on the waters. Shortly after he reached them and 
climbed up into the boat the wind ceased and in a 
little while they reached their destination. But the 
story that Jesus had walked upon the waters and 
had stilled the waves went out generally through- 
out the section, to add to the already well developed 
conviction that this was a man different from other 
men, with a power which must be the power of God 
Himself acting through him. 

Bethsaida was outside of Herod’s territory, sub- 
ject to his brother Philip. Here Jesus might have 
been safe, but for some reason he returned to the 
west side of the lake to the place known as Gennes- 
aret, a short distance north of Capernaum, where 
the level plain between the lake and the foot of the 
mountains broadens to an expanse several miles in 
width.” Here he was immediately beseiged as be- 
fore by crowds that brought to him the sick to be 
healed by a touch or a word. But his stay here was 
brief, for he was quickly reminded anew of the oppo- 
sition he had incited among the ruling class, and its 
undoubted danger to himself. Among the crowds 
gathered to meet him were representatives of the 
Jewish government from Jerusalem, Pharisees and 
lawyers, who had come to verify the reports con- 
cerning him which had now made their way into the 


’Mark 6:53-7:23; Matthew 14 :34-15 :20. 


114 JESUS THE Man 


Jewish capital. Observation by these strict cere- 
monialists led to fresh criticism because the dis- 
ciples of Jesus did not observe the tradition of the 
scribes which prohibited all Jews from eating with- 
out first having made themselves ceremonially clean 
by diligent washings. An inquiry from these tradi- 
tionalists as to why his disciples had abandoned the 
traditions of the elders led him into a vigorous at- 
tack upon the whole traditional system of the Phari- 
sees. With incisive language and convincing ex: 
ample he showed them the hypocrisy of a system 
which cast aside the fundamental commandments 
of the law and substituted therefor a body of tra- 
dition, contrary to the law.” 

‘‘And the Pharisees and the scribes ask him, Why walk 
not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, 
but eat their bread with defiled hands? And he said unto 
them, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is 
written, This people honoreth me with their lips, but their 
heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, 
teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Ye 
leave the commandments of God, and hold fast the tra- 
dition of men. And he said unto them, Full well do ye 
reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your 
own tradition. For Moses said, Honour thy father and 
thy mother; and, He that speaketh evil of father or mother, 
let him die the death: but ye say, If a man shall say to 
his father or his mother, That wherewith thou mightest 
be profited by me is Corban, that is to say, a gift, ye 
no longer suffer him to do aught for his father or his 
mother; making void the word of God by your tradition 
which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye. 

And he called the multitude to him again and said 
unto them, Hear me all of you, and understand; there is 


“Mark 7:1-23; Matthew 15 :1-20. 


EXxILE FROM HeErRop’s DomINnIonsS a BR hea 


nothing from without the man, that going into him can 
defile him: but the things which proceed out of the man, 
are those that defile the man. If any man have ears to 
hear, let him hear. 

And when he was entered into the house from the mul- 
titude, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. 
And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding 
also? Perceive ye not that whatsoever from without 
goeth into the man, it cannot defile him; because it 
goeth not into his heart, but into his belly, and goeth out 
into the draught? This he said, making all meats clean.” 

And he said, That which proceedeth out of the man, 
that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart 
of man, evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, 
murders, adulteries, covetings, wickedness, deceit, las- 
civiousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness: All 
these evil things come from within, and defile the man.” 


It was evident that Jesus’ preaching of the King- 
dom and the teaching of the Pharisees could not 
maintain themselves side by side. The vivid con- 
ception of Jesus which saw the whole world and all 
the evil and rubbish it contained about to pass away, 
could not possibly be contained within the artificial 
and complicated ceremonials of the Pharisaic sys- 
tem. Not merely were these ceremonial require- 
ments useless to people who would in a little while 
be in the immediate presence of the Most High, but 
the hypocrisy and the casuistic reasoning upon which 

~This last remark, an aside of the writer, undoubtedly made 
with polemical intent, is evidence of the extremely early date of 
Mark, as the controversy over the ceremonial uncleanness of 
meats offered to idols or not lawful under the Mosaic law, did 
not continue past the first generation of Christians. It also gives 
support to the tradition that it is a transcript of the story of 


Peter, as the question of the cleanness of all meats was one of 
peculiar interest to him. See Acts 10:9-48; I Cor. 8; Acts 15. 


116 JESUS THE Man 


they based their system aroused a tremendous an- 
tagonism in the mind and heart of the man who 
above everything else was sincere. This meeting, 
the biting language which he used in replying to 
the Pharisees, and the hostile reaction which un- 
questionably followed upon their part, must have 
been entirely convincing to him that there could be 
no safety for him in surroundings where both they 
and the emissaries of Herod were active.” 
Accompanied only by the twelve accordingly, he 
left the vicinity of Galilee and sought complete se- 
clusion in the cities sixty miles further to the north 
along the coast of the Mediterranean, in the same 
neighborhood where the great prophet Elijah once 
centuries before had concealed himself from the 
king who sought his hfe. In the neighborhood of 
the cities of Tyre and Sidon Jesus attempted to con- 
ceal himself.” This fact would indicate an iIncreas- 
ing vigor in the hostile activity of Herod, no doubt 
again stirred up by the Pharisees and lawyers, to 
apprehend him and put an end to the confusion he 
*This whole incident is probably out of order at this place, 
It evidently belongs in that first period of controversy with the 
Pharisees in Capernaum, when they, although beginning to be 
hostile, were still seeking information as to his reasons for his 
variations from the traditional law. After the breach recorded 
in Mark 38:6, their attitude was rather one of direct hostility than 
of inquiry. The more likely connection is for 7:24 to follow 6:56; 
Jesus probably went directly from Bethsaida to Tyre. The heal- 
ings probably occurred on his way to Tyre. The effect of the 
change, however, is insufficient to justify modification of the 


Sequence given by Mark, which is the sheet anchor of any con- 
nected reconstruction of the story. 


*Mark 7:24; Matthew 15:21. 


Eixtne From HeErop’s Dominions ay 


was causing. The search pressed him so closely that 
he was apprehensive, even in the foreign city of 
Tyre. But whether from the striking character of 
his appearance or from the extent to which he had 
already become known, ‘‘he could not be hid.’’ His 
was a personality to which concealment was impos- 
sible.” To Tyre and then to Sidon he went. How long 
he stayed we do not know, but since he failed in his 
purpose of concealment it was probably not very 
long. But during this period he had an opportunity 
to indicate the extent to which his Messianic con- 
ception was identical with the conception of his 
people, and yet how far he was capable of readjust- 
ing it upon a broader basis. 

In one of these cities a Canaanitish woman came 
to him and begged him to perform a cure upon her 
daughter. To us who think of the Gospel as be- 
ing as broad as the world his answer is startling 
in its strangeness. ‘‘I was not sent’’ he said to the 
woman, ‘‘but unto the lost sheep of the House of 
Israel. It is not meet to take the children’s bread 
and cast it to the dogs.’’ His message and his heal- 
ing power were for the children—the Jews; others 
were dogs. But even with this reply, the woman’s 
quick mind gained for her the coveted kindness. 
‘*Yea, Lord, even the dogs under the table eat of 
the children’s crumbs.’’ ‘‘For this saying,’’ he an- 
swered, ‘‘The devil has gone out of thy daughter.’’ 


“Numbers from Tyre and Sidon had joined the multitudes 
which followed him about Capernaum (Mark 3:7,8) and some of 
them naturally immediately recognized him. 


118 JESUS THE MAN 


‘And she went away to her house and found the 
child laid upon the bed and the devil gone out.’’ It 
is entirely possible that at this time began the change 
in his ideas which first admitted the possibility of 
others than Jews sharing in the benefits of the King- 
dom, and finally resulted in his announcement of an 
universal faith, a withdrawal of the Kingdom from 
the Jews who refused it, and its gift to another peo- 
ple, bringing forth its fruit. 

But in these alien cities he found no peace. Pressed 
by the urgency of his message to the lost sheep of 
Israel, the shore of the sea of Galilee drew him as 
a magnet. Even as a fugitive he must be nearer. 
Back to the East from the Mediterranean coast to 
the territory of Philip, through the community of 
towns known as Decapolis, he came again to the 
east side of the sea of Galilee.“ Again surrounded 
by a multitude eager for his message and his heal- 
ing, but still seeking to avoid publicity, he proceed- 
ed by boat across the lake to Magadan in the parts of 
Dalmanutha.” But he was not safe. Probably with- 


*Mark 7:31-87; Matthew 15:29-31. The story of the feeding 
of the four thousand, which follows in both gospels, is in all 
probability a variation of the one previously described. If not, 
it is identical in character with the first one and is subject to the 
same explanation. The story of the healing of the deaf man, 
told only in Mark 7 :32-37, which emphasizes his caution to those 
who saw it that they should not reveal it (note the contrast with 
the healing of the demoniac at Gerasa, where he told the man 
who was healed to go publish to his friends and relatives what 
great things had been done for him) indicates his continued sense 
of danger and desire to prevent new notoriety from bringing the 
attention of the authorities to him. 


*Mark 8:10; Matthew 15:39. No attempt to locate Dalma- 


EXxILE FROM HeERop’s Dominions 119 


in the actual limits of Herod Antipas, he was at 
least very near, near enough to be in danger if 
Herod’s officers should become active. 

The crowds again surged to him, and no sooner 
had he begun teaching and preaching again than the 
Pharisees from Jerusalem reappeared, hostile as 
before, this time heckling him in a new way. ‘‘Show 
us a sign’’ they said, ‘‘of the truth of these great 
things you are teaching. Show us a sign from 
heaven.’”™” 

This was an attempt directly to shatter his in- 
fluence with the people. This demand for proof of 
the truth of a message that the people were accept- 
ing and believing upon the bare word of Jesus, was 
expected to show them the unsubstantiality and 
lack of foundation of the expectation which Jesus 
was urging upon them. Jesus in the face of this de- 
mand made no attempt to convince the Pharisees or 
the crowd for whose benefit the question was asked. 
In their presence he healed no one, and did not indi- 


nutha and Magadan has been successful. Sanday (Sacred Sites 
of the Gospels p. 22) repeats the suggestion of Tristram that it 
may have been on the west side of the lake, between Tiberias 
and Magdala, in a valley called by the dragomans “wady Dal- 
manutha.” This would satisfy the necessity of the boat trip from 
the east side and then the second trip “to the other side,’ which 
ended at Bethsaida. That he came back into the neighborhood 
of his earlier activity is evident from the promptness with which 
the Pharisees appeared. 


*Mark 8:11-13; Matthew 16:1-4. According to the Talmud, 
the test of a true prophet consisted in demanding a sign. “But 
whence is one aware that he is a true prophet? In case he gives 
him a sign.’”” Gemara to Mishna VI, chapter X, Sanhedrin. In 
this instance they were applying the legal test to him. 


120 JESUS THE Man 


cate that the healing which he had previously done 
was a sign from heaven. This continued, per- 
sistent unbelief and hostility disturbed him deeply, 
but he merely dismissed the hostile Pharisees with 
an expression of contempt :* 


“He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, 
ye say it will be fair weather: for the heaven is red. And 
in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the 
sky is red and lowring. Ye know how to discern the face 
of the heaven, but ye cannot discern the signs of the 
times. An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after 
a sign; and there shall be no sign given unto it.” 


Apparently the attempt of the Pharisees to dis- 
credit him with the people failed entirely. But he was 
convinced anew of his danger. These continuously 
hostile Pharisees, in the neighborhood of a prince 
who was energetically seeking to arrest him, 
and with whom they were actively cooperating, con- 
stituted too great a threat, so he and the faithful 
Twelve again entered into the boat and went across 
the sea to Bethsaida. That he was fully cog- 
nizant of the double character of the danger in 
which he stood is shown by the warning against the 
Pharisees and Herod, the two sources of the now 
ever-present threat to them and to him, which he 
gave his followers on the way.” 

At Bethsaida, also now too near the territory of 


*“Matthew 16:2-4; Mark 8:12. 


Mark 8:14-21; Matthew 16:5-12. For the first recorded time 
he spoke sharply to the Twelve because of their inability to com- 
prehend his hidden meaning. Perhaps the strain was telling 
upon him. 


EXILE FROM Herop’s DomrInions PAL 


Herod, his stay was brief.” Up to the north this 
time, again entirely away from Herod’s dominion, 
some thirty miles into the territory of Philip they 
went, into the Jewish villages surrounding the new 
Greek city of Caesarea Philippi.” 


~The story of the healing of the blind man in Bethsaida 
(Mark 8:22-26) or rather in one of the villages near the new 
Greek city which Philip had built there and renamed Julias in 
honor of the wife of Tiberius, gives an added instance of the 
caution he was showing. Instead of sending the cured man to 
tell of the great blessing which had come upon him, he sent him 
away to his home, forbidding him from even entering the village 
again. Bethsaida was too near to Herod’s territory for an ex- 
citement to arise about him with safety. 


*Mark 8:27; Matt. 16:18. 


CHAPTER X 


CAESAREA PuHiuiePpI—THE T'wELVE RECOGNIZE JESUS 
AS THE MrsstanH—He DETERMINES TO GO TO 
JERUSALEM 


The condition of Jesus’ mind during the period 
just described is not difficult to comprehend. This 
interruption of his program by Herod had been en- 
tirely unexpected. The coming of the Kingdom as 
he had foreseen it had in it no provision for inter- 
ference by the earthly authorities which it was to 
replace. Whatever else he may have expected, he 
could not reasonably have assumed that he would be 
permitted to announce the coming of the Kingdom 
for a little while, and that then presently, he, the Son 
of God, should be found abandoning his preaching 
and hiding as a fugitive, even outside of the confines 
of the Jewish territory. 

No doubt during this period of seclusion, when he 
was not so pressed by the demands of the people 
and when he had more time to meditate, he thought 
long and earnestly upon the conception of the King- 
dom and of the Messiah as it had been given to him. 
Again and again he must have canvassed those 
prophecies which were believed to be applicable to 
the Messiah and which he, now that he believed him- 
self to be the recipient of this divine gift, must have 
applied to himself. In all the Messianic prophecies, 


[122] 


CAESAREA PHILIPPI 123 


he would have found nothing applicable to such a 
situation as that in which he found himself. 

Did his confidence in his mission waver? We can- 
not tell. Certainly such a wavering under similar 
conditions would be natural in any other man. But 
at any rate his meditations upon such questions seem 
to have reached a crisis during this retirement into 
the regions surrounding Caesarea Philippi. As they 
were traveling on the way among these villages, 
these questions forced themselves to the surface. Up 
until this time, there is no indication that he was 
ever disposed to be affected by the opinions of 
people concerning him. His interest was in saving 
them; what they thought about him had been 
of no consequence. But at this time, perhaps 
disturbed by uncertainty as to whether, since his ex- 
perience was so far from his expectation, his con- 
ception of himself and his mission was after all be- 
yond doubt, he began to ask his disciples about the 
opinion of the public concerning him. ‘‘Who do 
men say that I am?’’ he asked one day as they were 
on the road.’ 

Their answer was uncertain. He had deliberately 
refrained from speaking of the part that he believed 
he was to occupy in the coming Kingdom. [ven to 
the direct inquiry of John the Baptizer he had re- 
fused to give a direct answer. The people had natur- 
ally been led to form their own conclusions by their 
observation of what he said and what he did. These 
opinions were varied. Some, said the disciples, 

‘Mark 8 :27-30; Matt. 16:13-20; Luke 9:18-21. 


124 JESUS THE MAN 


thought he was John the Baptizer arisen. This of 
course was a natural inference, with them as it had 
been with Herod, because of the identity of his an- 
nouncement of the immediate coming of the Kingdom 
with that of John the Baptizer. Others, having in 
mind the forerunner of the Kingdom, as foretold by 
the prophet Malachi,’ thought that he was the fore- 
runner himself and said ‘*He is Elijah.’’ Still others, 
less influenced by the Messianic prophecies and the 
belief in the immediate coming of the Kingdom, but 
impressed by his personality and his preaching, said 
that he was one of the prophets; that is, that he was 
a new prophet similar to the prophets of the ancient 
days. Even the twelve, their attention directed by 
Jesus himself to the coming change and the neces- 
sity of saving the lost multitudes from the terrible 
Day of the Lord, had never had any reason to de- 
termine precisely their opinion of their leader. 

None of their answers were satisfying. They did 
not measure up to the exalted conception of his own 
person which he had retained since that memorable 
day at the fords of the Jordan. These ideas fur- 
nished no assistance in reestablishing the conviction 
which his difficulties tended to disturb. But perhaps 
those who had known him best and had seen him 
most closely and who understood him as the others 
had no opportunity to understand him, might see 
more clearly. ‘*But who say ye that I am?*’ he 
asked. 

Either because he was quicker to speak or because 

"Malachi 4:5. 


CAESAREA PHILIPPI 125 


more clearly than his fellows he had comprehended 
the thoughts and the character of his leader, Simon 
spoke promptly for the rest of the apostles. 
Close contact with this extraordinary character, daily 
observation of his wonderful works and words, had 
brought Peter, ever ready to see the miraculous and 
to interpret everything in the light of that tendency, 
to an opinion of him which he could express only in 
the highest conception with which he was familiar. 
The question of Jesus crystallized the conviction 
which had been growing in him, until now unformu- 
lated. A great light burst upon him; the whole won- 
derful experience became clear. ‘‘Thou art the 
Anointed One,’’ he cried, ‘‘the Son of the Living 
God!’’ 

The course of centuries was determined by those 
words of Simon. Under this assurance, the confi- 
dence of Jesus in the certainty of his mission solidi- 
fied, became as adamant. Up to this time he had 
revealed to no one that experience at the Jordan or 
the conviction which had come to him from that ex- 
perience. He was certain that from no human 
source could Simon have acquired this extraordinary 
idea. The inference was unescapable. Only from 
the same God who had revealed it to him had this 
revelation come to Simon; and if God had revealed 
it also to Simon, the revelation to himself must be 
genuine. It was confirmation, irresistible, con- 
elusive, of his own conviction. 

His relief and the joy that he found in this con- 
firmation is revealed in the triumphant words with 


126 JESUS THE MAn 


which he greeted this assurance from Simon. 
‘*Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonah! for flesh 
and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my 
Father who is in heaven.’’ Therefore it must be 
certain and true; no longer would any doubts dis- 
turb him. Continuing, he expressed the firmness of 
his purpose to continue and carry out his program, 
despite all the opposition of the powers of evil that 
had risen up against him and interfered with him. 
‘‘And I also say unto thee that thou art a rock’ and 
upon this rock I will build my assembly of the chosen 
of God and the gates of hell shall not overcome it.’’ 

This was a turning point in his life. The decision 
announced so positively was not modified, but with- 
out wavering or uncertainty controlled his actions 
absolutely during his few remaining weeks. 
With it came a new factor, changing the character 
of his thought and actions from that time on to such 
an extent that they seem almost those of a different 
man. 

Up until this time he had looked forward to his 
own full participation in the change of the age, 
though possibly without determining precisely what 
part he was to play in it; but now, in the face of the 
present bitter opposition by the religious and civil 
authorities in whatever part he was to play, his 
thoughts had already begun to turn to those prophe- 
cies which foretold the humiliations and sufferings 
which the Messiah must undergo. It was evident 


sGreek petros, petra. It is the translation of the Aramaic 
word which Jesus actually used, kephas. 


CAESAREA PHILIPPI LAG 


from his present’ experience that if he was to 
go forward to the completion of his task, if 
he was not to abandon it, he must be prepared to 
meet and endure whatever the authorities desired 
to inflict upon him. Convinced anew as he was that 
he was the Chosen of the Father, with an essential 
and necessary part to play, he no longer hesitated, 
but from this point he went forward without any 
doubt that pain, humiliation, suffering, probably 
death confronted him in fulfilling his destiny. The 
53rd chapter of Isaiah, which, while always referred 
to the Messiah, was generally ignored in the popu- 
lar conception of his part in the looked-for King- 
dom, now no doubt pressed upon his consciousness 
as the truest representation of what his own ex- 
perience was to be. 

Cautioning his disciples that the secret which he 
had heretofore kept in his own consciousness should 
still be a secret to all others, he began to reveal to 
them these new ideas. ‘T'o their amazement he who 
had heretofore taught them that the Kingdom of God 
was to appear immediately with wonders and signs 
and marvelous change in all things and that he and 
they were to be partakers in the blessings laid up 
for the chosen of God, now began to tell them that 
before the great change could come it was going to 
be necessary for him to suffer many things and to 
be humiliated and mistreated and perhaps in the 
end to die.’ 


‘Matthew 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22. 


128 JESUS THE MAN 


His new statements seemed to them contradictory 
and unreasonable; so much so that the same Simon 
who shortly before had announced with such con- 
fidence that he was the Messiah, now took him aside 
and began to contradict what he was saying, and to 
say to him, ‘‘Far be it from thee, Lord, this shall 
never be unto thee.’’ Such an idea seemed prepos- 
terous, impossible; it was contradictory of all they 
had seen of his power, of all the things that they 
had come to believe from their association with him 
and the teaching they had heard from him. How 
could such things happen to one who could still the 
storm, walk upon the waters, cast out devils, heal 
the sick, raise the dead? Even the rebuke which he 
administered to Peter seems not to have affected 
this attitude of mind, for during all the experiences 
through which he afterward led them they seem 
never to have abandoned the ideas of the earlier days 
of the preaching, when he opened to them the doors 
of expectation of immediate participation in a Joy- 
ous Kingdom of God, made all of good and happi- 
ness, 

But the effect upon Jesus was definite. All un- 
certainty was wiped out in the assurance that God 
had revealed his Messiahship directly to another be- 
side himself, and his thorough-going, logical and 
sincere mind began to face frankly the reconstruc- 
tion which was necessary in order to make his ex- 
pectations square with the facts as he now found 
them. 

Another thought no doubt was prominent in this 


CAESAREA PHILIPPI 129 


new conception of his destiny which now took posses- 
sion of Jesus. From the beginning he had preached 
the coming of that wonderful day when the Son of 
Man should appear upon the clouds with great 
honor and glory; should come with his angels and 
separate the good from the bad, the sheep from the 
goats; and should say to the chosen: ‘‘Come_ ye 
blessed of my Father’’ while he sent the wicked 
away into everlasting darkness, into punishment 
where the state of mind was best expressed by 
‘‘wailing and gnashing of teeth.’?’ But as he medi- 
tated upon this feature of the Messianic expectation, 
universal since the days of the writer of the 
book of Daniel, he must have realized that for 
him to fulfill that expectation some great change 
must intervene. It was obvious that under the con- 
ditions which then limited him he could not pos- 
sibly come upon the clouds of heaven; yet as the 
Messiah he must so come. How was this to be? The 
new conception of a Messiah who must suffer solved 
the problem for him. It might be that before the 
change could entirely take place there must be an 
intervention of death; after which he would ascend 
into heaven in a new form, in which he would be able 
to come upon the clouds as the Messiah must do. 
These two conceptions governed his course there- 
after. He determined, despite the opposition of 
Herod and of the Pharisees, to complete his destiny ; 
to fulfill those prophecies which must come to 
pass before the Kingdom of God could descend upon 
men. That this might, probably would, mean to him 


130 JESUS THE Man 


suffering, humiliation, imprisonment, perhaps death, 
deterred him not at all. Before the chosen could 
have the joys of the Kingdom of God he must per- 
form his part and undergo that which was written 
of him. And this, in the renewed assurance grow- 
ing out of the confident statement of Simon, he pro- 
ceeded to do. : 

Not only upon Jesus did this episode have effect. 
The influence of the words of Simon upon his associ- 
ates was very great. Such a conception once ex- 
pressed took firm hold upon minds already deeply 
impressed by the greatness of Jesus’ personality, 
and could not afterwards be avoided. It naturally 
took hold of their attention to the practical exclusion 
of other subjects. The tremendously increased place 
which he now took in their ideas is shown by an in- 
cident which occurred a few days later. Jesus took 
Peter and James and John with him up into a high 
mountain apart from the others and there, perhaps 
partly under the suggestion of their own expanded 
conception of him, perhaps partly as a result of the 
same power of suggestion from him by which so 
many marvels were wrought among the multitudes 
in other places, they underwent an amazing experi- 
ence. As they looked at this man, who had now be- 

SMark 9:2-13; Matthew 17:1-13; Luke 9:28-36. This ecstatic 
experience was probably similar in basis to that of Jesus himself 
at the time of his baptism. Concentration on the great new idea 
which had come to them, that the Messiah was already present 
with them, would readily absorb their entire consciousness and 


eventuate in such a vision as the story describes. The record is 
in accordance with recognized psychological laws. It is unde- 


ee Og -\r— t 


CAESAREA PHILIPPI 131 


come to them an embodiment of divinity itself, he 
seemed to be transfigured before them; his garments 
eleamed, appearing exceeding white, brilliant past 
the power of any earthly agent to whiten them. And 
suddenly appeared with him two persons whom they 
immediately assumed to be Elijah and Moses, and 
who seemed to talk with Jesus. Filled with astonish- 
ment and adoration, Peter was again ready, this 
time with a suggestion that they make permanent 
arrangements for the convenience and abode of the 
wonderful master and his two visitors. But as other 
visions, it suddenly passed away. A cloud seemed 
to overshadow them, and out of it again were heard 
the words which had so overwhelmed Jesus at the 
Jordan: ‘*This is my beloved Son.’’ But suddenly 
the cloud and the glistening garments too disappear- 
ed; the vision passed completely; they were alone 
with Jesus. 

In our day, and among people of our type of 
mind, such an experience, vivid though it be, would 
be analyzed and soon understood for what it was,— 
a purely subjective experience, an ecstatic vision, an 
apparition, which had its source in the operations of 
their own minds, influenced perhaps by an objective 
suggestion of the powerful personality with whom 
they were in contact. But to these three fishermen, 
who had no scientific knowledge by which to check 
such an experience, it was absolutely real; it never 


niably the experience of Peter as he told it in the presence of 
Mark; John’s vision and James’ may conceivably have had other 
characteristics. 


132 JESUS THE Man 


occurred to them to doubt its verity. Jesus himself, 
cautious the while, required them to say nothing 
about this vision, but its effect upon them was most 
profound. They did not realize that it had grown 
out of the opinion of Jesus that they already 
formed and their intense and exclusive attention to 
this compelling new idea. To them it was merely 
absolutely conclusive proof that that conception was 
true beyond doubt. 

From that time forward their attitude towards 
him was controlled by the firm conviction that he was 
superhuman in his nature and his authority, and 
whatever he did and said took on with them cor- 
responding power and meaning. 

They themselves now apparently for the first time 
began to meditate more deeply upon the conditions 
and the circumstances surrounding the coming of 
the Kingdom and of the Messiah. Now that the belief 
that Jesus was truly the Messiah had become firmly 
fixed in their minds, they were puzzled about some 
matters. 

As they went down from the mountain they in- 
quired about the apparent lack of the most charac- 
teristic feature in the common expectation of 
the Messianic appearance ‘‘ How is it,’’ they said, 
‘‘that the scribes say that Elijah must first ecome?’’ 
So long as the exact nature of Jesus’ own person- 
ality had not been determined, that was a question 
that needed no answer, because the stage which the 
process of the coming of the Kingdom had reached 
was not known to them. But now that the Messiah 





CAESAREA PHILIPPI 133 


was already here, where was the great forerunner? 

Jesus’ answer wag ready and explicit. ‘‘Elijah’’ 
he said, ‘‘indeed cometh first and restoreth all 
things and of the Son of Man it is written that he 
should suffer many things and be set at naught. 
But Elijah is already come and to him also they have 
done whatsoever they would.’’ 

The disciples now realized that he was speaking of 
John, and this momentary doubt too was laid at rest. 
John’s impression had been great enough to justify 
such an idea of him, it completely fulfilled the con- 
ditions of the problem; and Jesus’ answer satisfied 
them entirely. Krom this time on they were certain 
that the Messiah was actually here and that the 
change in the age and the actual Kingdom of God 
could be expected at any moment. Awe-inspiring, 
arousing the most vivid hopes and fears, such a con- 
viction must have been overwhelming to them.’ 

It now became clear to Jesus that at any danger 
and at any cost he must go up to Jerusalem to com- 

°The healing of the epileptic child reported as immediacely fol- 
lowing in Mark 9:14-29, Matthew 17:14-20, Luke 9:37-43, is sim- 
ilar to the numerous other cases of “casting out devils” described 
in the gospels. But the careful reader will recognize the com- 
pletely developed attack and perfectly normal recovery of con- 
sciousness after the attack had run its course. There is no nec- 
essary evidence of any actuai curative or even alleviative effect 
from the command of Jesus. Everything that is reported could 
have taken place just as well without the intervention of any ex- 
ternal factor whatever. An interesting side light is the impatience 
manifested by Jesus at the demand made upon him (Mark 9:19, 
Matthew 17:17, Luke 9:41). To one who was now steeling his 
soul for the supreme sacrifice in order to bring in the Kingdom, 


the continuous demands for benefits pertaining solely to this age 
were becoming irksome. 


134 JESUS THE MAn 


plete the prophecies concerning the Messiah. The 
Messianic prophecies largely revolved about Jeru- 
salem. Many of them could be fulfilled in no other 
place. Since he believed that he must fulfill these 
prophecies before the Kingdom could come, the con- 
clusion that he must go to Jerusalem was inevitable. 
Judging from the way he carried out this purpose, 
he must also have kept in mind the possibility that 
after all he might be able to fulfill the prophecies 
and bring the Kingdom to pass without the inter- 
vention of his death. Perhaps when he appeared. 
in Jerusalem, among the chosen people of his 
Father, they, as had the people of Galilee, might 
recognize him, flock to him, fulfill the law and the 
prophets, and bring to pass the Kingdom that was to 
be. 


He did not desire to go to Jerusalem alone. To 
deal single-handed with the opposition and resist- 
ance of the Pharisees and the aristocrats, whom 
he now knew to be deeply hostile to him, would be 
impossible. Besides, in the great event which he 
expected to take place there he desired as many as 
possible to participate. So ealling together the 
Twelve, together with the crowds who, here as else- 
where, followed him eagerly, numbers of them fully 
convinced of the truth of his message, he earnestly 
invited them to accompany him. He did not con- 
ceal from them the hardships and dangers into which 
he was about to lead them, but showed them the use- 
lessness of avoiding peril at such a time. For, as 
he again assured them most explicitly, the Kingdom 


CAESAREA PHILIPPI 135 


of God was about to come with power and those who 
were not willing to acknowledge him now, in that 
great day he would not acknowledge before the heav- 
enly Father :’ 


“And he called unto him the multitude with his dis- 
ciples, and said unto them, If any man would come aft- 
er me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and 
follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose 
it; and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the 
gospel’s shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if 
he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? 
For what shall a man give in exchange for his life? For 
whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in 
this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man 
also shall be ashamed of him when he cometh in the glory 
of his Father with the holy angels. And he said unto 
them, Verily I say unto you, there are some here of them 
that stand by, who shall in no wise taste of death, till 
they see the kingdom of God come with power.” 


Such an appeal to such an audience could not fail 
to be deeply effective. From that time he had a 
nucleus about him, gradually increasing with the 
passage of the days, of men and women who were 
prepared in all respects to follow him into whatso- 
ever circumstances he should lead them. 


"Mark 8:34-9-1. The reference to the cross is an unconscious 
reflex into the story of a factor which had no place and no meaning 
until after the via dolorosa and Calvary. 


CHAPTER XI 


THe Marcy To JERUSALEM 


Filled with this renewed determination, Jesus now 
cast aside his apprehension of Herod and returned 
to Galilee, there among the crowds which a short 
time before had followed him to find other follow- 
ers on his trip to Jerusalem. This was to be a su- 
preme attempt. Through his appearance in the cen- 
tral city of the Jewish people and the announcement 
of his message, supported by the wonders that he 
would do in their presence, surrounded by the mul- 
titudes who were to share with him the coming 
Kingdom, he would secure recognition for himself, 
change of attitude upon the part of the Jewish popu- 
lace and a surrender of the nation to the will of God. 
This would usher in the Kingdom at once. Or if he 
should fail in that, by his death, which he knew 
would be sure to follow such a failure, he would ful- 
fill the prophecies of the suffering of the Messiah 
and by his resurrection and return upon the clouds 
of Heaven, would nevertheless bring to men the 
Messianic kingdom. Never did other human being 
entertain so high a purpose; and the firmness, the 
unselfishness, the nobility, the utterly heroic atti- 
tude with which he carried it out have bound the 
hearts of humanity to him with unbreakable bonds 
of admiration and affection. 


IMark 9 :30-32. 
[136] 





Tue MarcH To JERUSALEM 137 


First he busied himself in Capernaum, making 
preparations and secretly gathering together those 
Galileans who would accompany him to Jerusalem. 
He had been away from Galilee long enough to be 
temporarily forgotten by the authorities and for the 
immediate energy of their attempt to seize him to 
have ceased, but good sense required that no oppor- 
tunity be given for the officers of Herod to lay 
hands upon him before he had his plans completed 
and his followers about him. 

His immediate followers had not yet become in 
even a slight degree adjusted to Jesus’ change of 
attitude. They were ready to go with him to Jeru- 
salem, but they expected that at Jerusalem the King- 
dom of God would be revealed, and Jesus would 
come into his authority. Since the recognition of 
his Messiahship near Caesarea Philippi their 
whole attitude toward him had changed. From 
that time on we find an element of fear mingled 
with awe in the reverence which up until that 
time had been their prevailing sentiment in their re- 


*Mark 9:33; Matthew 17:22. The Greek verb used in the par- 
ticipial phrase translated in Matthew 17 :22 “And while they abode 
in Galilee” is correctly rendered by the marginal translation of 
the Revised Version “while they were gathering themselves to- 
gether in Galilee.” This verb occurs in one other place in the New 
Testament, Acts 28:3, and is there translated “had gathered.” In 
classic Greek it always has the same or a similar meaning, never 
the meaning “abide.” Such an interpretation would never have 
been placed upon it here had the translators kept in mind the 
meaning of this new purpose of Jesus and the character of the 
expedition he was organizing. The secrecy with which he was op- 
erating is shown in Mark 9:30. This is the first time he had vis- 
ited Capernaum since he left it just prior to his visit to Nazareth. 


138 JESUS THE MAN 


lations with him. This man whom they now be- 
heved to be the Anointed of God, who througn the 
power of God was to perform wonderful things and 
exercise divine power as the vice-regent of God him- 
self in the new Kingdom which was about to dawn 
upon them, had become to them an entirely different 
personage from the preacher who had been an- 
nouncing the kingdom or the gifted and sympathetic 
man who was able to heal diseases and cast out de- 
mons. No wonder they became afraid. 

It was because of no fault of Jesus that their con- 
fidence in the complete and immediate success of their 
expedition was not shaken. While the crowds of his 
followers were gathering themselves together in Gali- 
lee, Jesus again told them that the Son of Man 
would be delivered up into the hands of men, that 
they would kill him, and that on the third day he 
would arise again. This conception did not neces- 
sarily mean that he sensed a failure of his mission. 
To him it was apparent that it might become neces- 
sary for his death to occur as a phase in the coming 
of the Kingdom of God. Looking at it from that 
distance, with the full confidence that following 
such an event, if it did occur, the promise of God 
would still be completely fulfilled and that he would 
return, perhaps in new form, changed so as to be 
able to come upon the clouds of Heaven, the antici- 
pation of death itself had little terror for him. If 
it was necessary for this to occur in order that the 


*Mark 9:82. 


Tue Marcu To JERUSALEM 139 


gates of Hell should not prevail against the little 
band which he had called out from the midst of the 
lost world (that is the real meaning of the Greek 
term which has been translated ‘‘church’’), he was 
entirely willing to undergo it. But this conception 
seems not to have penetrated the minds of the twelve 
even after his numerous repetitions of it. 

The supreme confidence in the coming Kingdom 
which Jesus still maintained seemed to them to 
mean only the triumphant coming of the Kingdom 
as they had previously comprehended it, and failure 
and death had no part in it. The two conceptions they 
were unable to reconcile, so they simply put aside 
Jesus’ statements concerning his death, just as 
Peter had done when Jesus mentioned it the first 
time. This attitude was emphasized by the feeling 
of fear before referred to; they did not press their 
inquiries about this matter upon him for the express 
reason that they were afraid to do so. 

This fear may also have been heightened by a 
change of attitude upon the part of Jesus himself. 
Beginning with this time, an increasing hardness in 
his own attitude appears. It was impossible that 
this should not be so. No man could steel himself 
to undertake an enterprise which had for a very pos- 
sible, even probable, termination his own death, 
without a definite hardening of purpose and a con- 
centration of attention which would compel him to 
ignore and cast aside less important matters. The’ 


‘Luke 9:51. 


140 JESUS THE MAn 


expression of one of his chroniclers that ‘‘He set 
his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem,’’ indicates 
that perhaps timid attempts were made by some 
of his followers to induce him to abandon this 
dangerous plan. There would be no reason to 
eall attention to the determination which he showed 
if there had been no opposition of any character to 
reveal the force of this determination. His whole at- 
titude at this time must have been similar to and a 
continuation of that determination which he re- 
vealed when he told Peter and the T'welve ‘‘The 
gates of Hell shall not prevail.’’ 

The continued expectation of his close folluwers 
that he was about to establish some type of 
kingdom in which they were to participate is shown 
by an incident occurring while they were still in 
Galilee. Perhaps in his own home, (the expression 
is ‘‘while he was in the house’’ or ‘‘at home’’) he 
asked them the subject of a discussion that he had 
observed among them upon the way.’ They hesitated 
to reveal the fact, which he had already observed, 
that they were arguing about precedence, trying to 
determine which of them in the Kingdom which was 
about to be established was to be the greatest. He 
did not rebuke them, but calling them all together he 
gave them an object lesson which should have been 
sufficient to indicate to them how far they missed 
his conception of the coming Kingdom. He took a 
little child and set him in the midst of them and said 


‘Matthew 18:1-14; Mark 9:33-37; Luke 9:46-48. 





Tue Marcu To JERUSALEM 141 


—‘‘*Unless you become as little children, you cannot 
even enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. He that 
shall humble himself as this little child—this one 
shall be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.’’ 
That is, there was no room in the coming Kingdom 
for the greater or the lesser, but only for those who 
received the gift of God humbly as a little. child. 
There was to be no authority except the authority 
of the Son of Man, which was not to be shared. This 
idea was not maintained without modification, as 
will be later seen, but presented as it was, it should 
have raised doubt in the minds of the Twelve as to 
whether their personal, selfish hopes were to be 
fulfilled in the new Kingdom. 

There is no reason to doubt that the followers of 
Jesus at this time universally held the opinion that 
the meaning of his coming, of the Messiahship which 
they had now come firmly to believe, was the in- 
stitution of the material and earthly kingdom of the 
Jews, which had been expected for generations and 
which constituted the never failing text for their 
prophets. It seems that with the possible exception 
of John the Baptizer, Jesus alone in his lifetime 
arrived at the spiritualized conception of a true 
kingdom of righteousness which should consist 
primarily in the presence of God and of a relation 
of love and confidence between him and those good 
people who by their virtue and their trust towards 
God should be able to endure through the change 
and be a part of this Kingdom. Both John the Bap- 
tizer and Jesus had preached that the essence of the 


142 JESUS THE Man 


preparation for the Kingdom was a change of heart, 
which should be revealed in an attitude of love to- 
wards men and towards God; but this conception was 
so revolutionary, so far above the current idea 
of the Messianic kingdom, which was purely a sel- 
fish Judiastic hope, nationalist and exclusive in its 
nature, that it required years of meditation upon the 
part of even his closest’followers to enable them to 
realize its true meaning. 

There is no basis for an opinion upon the number 
of followers with whom he finally set out from Gal- 
ilee to go to Jerusalem. We only know that they 
were numerous, that they included the twelve and 
the women who had accompanied him through his 
Gahllean trip. Probably they included believers 
from all parts of northern Palestine, but with the 
Galileans predominating. We ean understand how 
it was possible to gather this body together without 
exciting the suspicion of Herod. The Jewish Pass- 
over was near at hand, and it was customary, for 
purposes of safety, comfort and companionship, for 
families and neighborhoods to join themselves to- 
gether to travel up to Jerusalem. At that time each 
year a very large percentage of the entire Jewish 
population of Palestine abandoned their business 
and went up to the racial capital to participate in 
the greatest of all the Jewish festivals. The roads 
to Jerusalem were full of such caravans, some of 
them very large; consequently a body of people 
such as Jesus gathered would be able to make this 
trip without exciting the interest and the suspicion 


THE Marcu To JERUSALEM 143 


of the authorities which under other circumstances 
they would have been sure to arouse. 

Whatever the original number, they were speedily 
augmented by additions from every direction. 
When they set out, or shortly afterwards, Jesus 
sent out seventy chosen followers, to go in pairs 
into all the towns and villages through which 
he would pass on his way to Jerusalem, to announce 
the coming of the Kingdom and the purpose of this 
expedition, to make the necessary arrangements for 
their comfort, and to prepare those who were in 
sympathy with the purpose of the expedition to at- 
tach themselves to it’. These thirty-five pairs of 
men moving rapidly in advance through city and 
town, announcing anew the message of John and of 
Jesus, that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, 
that a multitude was coming on the way to Jerusa- 
lem to usher in that Kingdom, to a people already 
familiar with this message and in a large part con- 
verted to it, could not fail to swell the numbers of 
this array. 

For such a trip as he proposed two roads were 
in general use. One was by way of the Valley of the 
Jordan on the east side of the river, followed by the 
steady climb up from the Jordan through Jericho, 
some three thousand feet in ten or twelve miles, to 

®Luke 10:1-24. Luke has included here much of the material 
used by Matthew and Mark in connection with the earlier sending 
of the Twelve. The looseness with which he assembled his mate- 
rial is shown by his inclusion here (evidently incorrectly) of the 


upbraiding of the Galilean cities (10:13-15) which also occurred 
mucb earlier. 


144 JESUS THE MANn 


Jerusalem; the other, more directly south through 
Samaria along the irregular summit of the ridge 
which forms the back-bone of western Palestine, up- 
on the high point of which Jerusalem itself was situ- 
ated. It seems to have been Jesus’ plan to take the 
hill road, but upon the first attempt to pass through 
a Samaritan town the Samaritans, seeing that his 
face was set to go down to the hated Jerusalem, re- 
fused permission either to pass through or to se- 
cure the necessary food.’ The new spirit which filled 
the Twelve, who thought they were now on their way 
to take over the control of the world, with the com- 
plete divine power at their command, is revealed by 
the question of James and John—‘‘Do you desire 
that we bid fire come down from Heaven and con- 
sume them?’’—an inquiry which showed their own 
unwillingness to brook opposition, as well as their 
present opinion of the power of their leader. 

The inquiry evoked only a rebuke, but the attitude 
of the Samaritans which had caused the question 
changed the course of the journey and Jesus and 
his followers turned to the east along the borders 
between Samaria and Galilee to take the other road. 
Numerous incidents of the journey are told.” For 


"Luke 9:51-56; 17:11; Matthew 19:1. The attitude of the 
Samaritans may have been caused by a realization of his purpose 
and an unwillingness to complicate themselves with the authori- 
ties by giving aid and assistance to such an expedition. 


‘Luke carries most of this material. Indeed, by far the largest 
element in the third gospel is the chronicle of this expedition and 
the report of the numerous discourses delivered on the way. ‘“Q” 
evidently was largely composed of this material. It is not eare- 


=. 
PO 


ee Ee 


* te ogra 


ohy - 
= Oo ND 


ee 


oe 


Tuer Marcu To JERUSALEM 145 


the most part the healings which characterize the 
early months in Galilee are now lacking. But some 
of the most illuminating of his parables and dis- 
courses were delivered during this march. 

He seems again to have been harassed by emissar- 
ies of the Pharisees who mingled in the crowds of 
his followers and attempted to put him at a disad- 
vantage. Another time under the urgings of those 
same skeptics, who insisted that he tell them just 
when and where the Kingdom he was promising 
would appear, he said:” 


“And being asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom 
of God cometh, he answered them and said, The Kingdom 


fully organized, however, and with it is mingled much iaterial 
from the earlier months of his preaching, parts of which Matthew 
includes in the Sermon on the Mount and the great series of par- 
ables delivered on the seashore at Capernaum, together with a 
sprinkling of the discourses and discussions which occurred in the 
temple at Jerusalem. There is no sequence whatever in this part 
of Luke; apparently he assembled the material before him with- 
out any definite system or idea of chronological order. Such in- 
ference as can be drawn from: it indicates that “Q’ was a disor- 
ganized collection of the sayings of Jesus, without reference to 
connection or sequence in time, and that Luke merely inserted 
parts of it bodily, without attempt to unscramble it, or to place 
each saying or discourse in its proper relation to the narrative 
of Mark. Mark mentions only six incidents which occurred on 
the way; Matthew follows Mark closely. Consequently, with most 
of the material contained only in Luke, and that interspersed with 
material plainly belonging to other periods of his career, there is 
no means for determining an absolute sequence for this trip. 
Many events are described which transpired between the time 
he left Galilee and his arrival at Bethany but the order is unde- 
termined. There is no reason for believing that the order of 
these events which this book follows in the text is correct, or 
even more nearly so than others that could be proposed. 


‘Luke 16:14. ~vTjuke 17 :20-36. 


146 JESUS THE MANn 


of God cometh not so that it can be observed; neither 
shall they say, Lo here, or lo there!. for behold, the king- 
dom of God is in your midst.” And he said unto the dis- 
ciples” Thy days will come when ye shall desire to see 
one of the days of the Son of Man, and ye shall not see it. 
And they shall say to you, Lo, there; Lo, here! go not 
away nor follow after them. For as the lightning, when 
it lighteneth out of the one part of heaven, shineth unto 
the other part under heaven; so shall the Son of Man be 
in his day. But first must he suffer many things, and be 
rejected of this generation. And as it came to pass in the 
days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of 
the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married, 
they were given in marriage, until the day when Noah 
entered into the ark, and the flood came, and de- 
stroyed them all. Likewise, even as it came to pass in 
the days of Lot; they ate, they drank, they bought, they 
sold, they planted, they builded; but in the day that Lot 
went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from 
heaven, and destroyed them all. After the same manner, it 
shall be in the day that the Son of Man is revealed. In that 
day he that shall be upon the house top, and his goods in 
the house, let him not go down to take them away: and 
let him that is in the field, likewise not return back. Re- 
member Lot’s wife. I tell you, in that night there shall 
be two men on one bed; the one shall be taken and the 
other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding to- 
gether; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be 
left.” 

That is, the Kingdom is not a matter of location, 


subject to observation, a place to which one ean go, 
but a condition which is in the midst, everywhere, 
and which appears suddenly, without warning, not 
subject to observation or prevision. When the Son 

“Note how he speaks freely to his disciples, with reserve to 


the Pharisees. Verse 25 looks like an insertion of a saying of 
another time; here it only breaks the thought. 


VQuke 14:25-33. 


Tue Marcu To JERUSALEM 147 


of Man comes on the clouds of heaven, the Kingdom 
will appear everywhere at once, just as the lightning 
appears all over the sky at once. 

The importance and danger of the enterprise upon 
which he had embarked seemed to grow upon him. 
He soon realized that these tremendous multitudes, 
which were flocking to him along the way and in 
every village through which he passed, were in 
large part composed of people who did not compre- 
hend the seriousness of their undertaking. His de- 
mands upon his followers became more rigid, more 
diffeult of compliance, but still more consonant with 
the nature of the enterprise. For instance in one 
place we are told:” 


“Now there went with him great multitudes; and he 
turned and said unto them, If any man cometh unto me, 
and hateth not his father, and mother, and wife, and 
children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life 
also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not 
bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” 
For which of you desiring to build a tower, doth not first 
sit down, and count the cost, whether he have wherewith 
to complete it? Lest haply, when he hath laid a founda- 
tion, and is not able to finish, all that behold it begin 
to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was 
not able to finish. Or what king, as he goeth to encounter 
another king in war, will not sit down first, and take coun- 
sel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that 
cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, 
while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an 
ambassage, and asketh conditions of peace. So therefore, 


*Verse 27 is another instance of a transfer of post-crucifixion 
language back into the language of Jesus. 


148 JESUS THE MANn 


whosoever the be of you that renounceth not all that he 
hath, he cannot be my disciple.” 


And at another time: 


“And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, 


Lord suffer me first to go and bury my fatner. Jesus 
said unto him, Leave the dead to bury their own dead: 
but go thou and publish abroad the kingdom of God.” 

“And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but 
first suffer me to bid farewell to them that are at my 
house. But Jesus said unto him, No man, having put 
his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the king- 
dom of God.” 

A realization of the hazard of his situation, in 
which he was in constant danger from the agents of 
Herod, and could find no place of safety, is shown 
in another remark— 

“And as they went on the way, a certain man said unto 
him, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And 
Jesus said unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds 
of the heaven have nests; but the Son of Man hath not 
where to lay his head.” 


Another instance of his idea of the extent to which 
everything must be abandoned in order to enter into 
his Kingdom is found in his language to a young 
ruler among the Jews, who as Jesus and his multi- 
tudes were passing ran out to meet him.” 


“And when he was going forth into the way, there ran 
one to him and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good 
Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? 
And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? None 
is good save one, even God. Thou knowest the com- 


“Luke 9 :59-62. 
*Tuke 9 :57-58. 
*Mark 10:17-22; Matthew 19:16-22; Luke 18:18-23. 


} 





THe Marcu to JERUSALEM 149 


mandments, Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not 
steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor 
thy father and thy mother. And he said unto ‘him, Teach- 
er, all these I thave observed from my youth. And 
Jesus looking upon him, loved him, and said unto him, 
One thing thou lackest: go sell whatsoever thou hast, 
and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in 
heaven: and come and follow me. But his countenance 
fell at the saying, and he went away sorrowful: for he 
was one that had great possessions.” 


Much light is thrown upon the character of the 
erowds who were following him by the comments of 
Jesus to his disciples upon this incident :* 


“And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his dis- 
ciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into 
the kingdom of God! And the disciples were astonished 
at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto 
them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in 
riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for 
a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich 
man to enter into the kingdom of God. And they were 
astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, 
Who then can be saved? And Jesus looking upon them 
saith, With men it is impossible but not with God: for 
with God all things are possible.” 

The inference to be drawn from this is obvious. 
The multitudes which by this time were grown so 
large that they were trampling upon one another in 
their attempts to approach near to Jesus” were com- 
posed of a type similar in general to those who 
thronged to him during his first months in Galilee. 
This is naturally to be expected, because of the char- 
acter of hope which Jesus held out in his promise 


of the overturn of existing conditions. Those who 
“Duke 12:1. 


150 JESUS THE Man 


were rich and powerful, to whom the existing order 
was more satisfactory, did not find the same motive 
to follow Jesus in such an undertaking as did the 
poor and weak, to whom Jesus’ message opened a 
door of hope hitherto completely closed. This situa- 
tion prevailed for a long time, for we find Paul 
twenty years later writing that—‘‘not many wise 
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, 
are called.’” 

The conversation which followed the visit of the 
young ruler also throws additional light upon the 
nature of the hope entertained by the Twelve, a hope 
in this instance at least to some extent supported 
by Jesus. Observing the refusal of the young ruler 
to take the advice of Jesus, to leave his possessions 
and to follow him, Peter began to say: ‘‘We have 
left all and followed thee. What then shall we 
have?’’ Jesus’ response was astonishingly specific: 


“Ye who have followed me, in the regeneration when the 
Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also 
shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes 
of Israel; and every one that hath left houses or brethren, 
or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands, for 
my name’s sake, shall receive a hundred fold and shall 
inherit eternal life.” 

It is small cause for wonder that the multitudes of 
the poor and distressed, long filled with the belief 
that all this relief was surely to come at some time, 


and now subject to the new belief that the man who 


1 Cor. 1:26. 
*Matthew 19:27-29; Mark 10:28-30; Luke 18 :28-30. 


Tt ey 





THe Marcy To JERUSALEM 151 


was leading them down to Jerusalem was really about 
to fulfill these promises, should have flocked in 
thousands to one who so boldly offered such tremen- 
dous rewards for following him. 

Filled with this spirit and still unrepressed by the 
incident in Galilee when the twelve attempted to de- 
termine who should be greatest among them, per- 
haps even in entire ignorance of this event, the 
mother of James and John, the two most ambitious 
members of the Twelve, as they approached the end 
of their journey came to Jesus and made a new re- 
quest, asking that when he should come into his 
Kingdom, one of her sons should be permitted to have 
the place upon his right and the other on his left.” 
His refusal to promise them the two places of highest 
honor was coupled with an expression indicating 
that in his own mind he had not fully worked out all 
the things which were to occur. ‘‘*To sit on my right 
hand or on my left hand,’’ he said, ‘‘is not mine to 
give, but is for them for whom it has been prepared.”’ 
His assurance of his Messiahship seemed in this in- 
stance to be limited to his own personal part; he had 
not decided who, if anyone, would share his personal 
glory, though in the previous instance he had not 
hesitated to assure Peter that at the end of the world 
the twelve should occupy their twelve thrones, judg- 
ing the twelve tribes. 

The great influx of new additions raised a ques- 
tion in the mind of his earlier adherents as to wheth- 


"Matthew 20 :20-28. 


Loe JESUS THE Man 


er their place in the Kingdom was to be divided with 
the neweomers. Evidently, if there were to be more 
participants there would be less for each in the ma- 
terial kingdom which they all expected and it seemed 
unfair that those just joining them should enter it 
on the same basis as those who had been with him 
from the beginning. Jesus, who desired that all who 
were willing should enter with him, attempted to al- 
lay this feeling by the parable of the householder, 
who paid all those whom he employed to work in his 
vineyard the same,” without reference to when they 
began work, and justified the householder as doing 
what he desired with his own: 


“Many shall be last that are first, and first that are 
last. 

For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that was 
a householder, who went out early in the morning to hire 
laborers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with 
the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his 
vineyard. And he went out about the third hour and saw 
others standing in the market place idle, and to them he 
said, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right 
I will give you; and they went their way. Again he went 
about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did likewise. 
And about the eleventh hour he went out. and found 
others standing; and he said unto them, Why stand ye 
all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man 
hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye into the vine- 
yard. And when even was come, the lord of the vine- 
yard saith unto his steward, Call the laborers and pay 
them their hire, beginning from; the last unto the first. 
And when they came that were hired about the eleventh 
hour, they received every man a denarius. And when 


“Matthew 19 :30-20 :16. 


Tue Marcy To JERUSALEM (ays 


the first came they supposed that they would receive 
more; and they likewise received every man a denarius. 
And when they received it they murmured against the 
householder, saying, These last have spent but one hour, 
and thou hath made them equal unto us, who have borne 
the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he 
answered and said to one of them, Friend, I do thee no 
wrong; didst thou not agree with me for a denarius? 
Take up that which is thine, and go thy way; it is my 
will to give unto the last even as unto thee. Is it not 
lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? or is 
thine eye evil because I am good? 
So the last shall be first and the first last.” 


The roads were filled with parties of pilgrims on 
their way to the Passover, and at least in the earlier 
stages the party of Messianists had escaped ob- 
servation. But by this time Herod’s government 
had again become aware of Jesus’ activity and were 
correspondingly active in their attempt to seize him. 
Certain of the Pharisees, perhaps apprehensive of 
the result of the march of this great multitude upon 
Jerusalem and seeking by arousing his fears to dis- 
suade him from his purpose, now came to him and 
told him of his danger, advising him to ‘‘get thy- 
self hence for Herod seeks to kill thee.’’* He was 
now within Herod’s territory and subject to certain 
arrest if he should be found. He was not ignorant 
of his danger, but he was fully embarked upon an 
undertaking from which there was to be no turning 
back. ‘‘Go tell that fox’’ he said to those who 
brought him the information, ‘‘behold I cast out de- 
mons and perform cures to-day and to-morrow; the 


“Luke 13 :31-33. 


154 JESUS THE MAN 


third day, I end my course. Nevertheless I must go 
on my way to-day and to-morrow and the day fol- 
lowing for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of 
Jerusalem.’’ 

The probability of his death was definite in his 
mind, but it was also a definite part of his concep- 
tion that this death, if it was to occur, must take 
place in Jerusalem. He seems now to have begun 
to realize that the expectation of the multitude was 
too definite; that they were confident that the King- 
dom of God was immediately to appear in material 
form and were in no sense prepared for the events 
which he saw might possibly, even probably inter- 
vene before that consimmation. To prepare them 
for possible disappointment, he now delivered to 
them a parable, which clearly reveals his own ex- 
pectation of his departure (his death), his return, 
and upon his return his exaction of an accounting 
both from followers and from those who would not 
receive him :* 

“He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a 
far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to re- 
turn. And he called ten servants of his, and gave them 
ten pounds, and said unto them, Trade ye herewith till I 
come. But his citizens hated him, and sent an ambassage 


after him, saying, We will not that this man reign over 
us. 

And it came to pass, when he was come back again, 
having received the kingdom, then he commanded to be 
called unto him the servants unto whom he had given 
the money, that he might know what they had gained by 


*Tuke 19:11-28. 





Tre Marcy To JERUSALEM Woo 


trading. And before him came the first, saying, Lord, 
thy pound hath made ten pounds more. And he said 
unto him, Well done, thou good servant: because thou 
wast found faithful in a very little, have thou authority 
over ten cities. And the second came, saying, Lord, thy 
pound hath gained five pounds. And he said unto him 
also, Be thou also over five cities. And another came, 
saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept 
laid up in a napkin: for I feared thee, because thou art 
an austere man: thou takest up that thou layest not down, 
and reapest that thou didst not sow. He saith unto him, 
Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked ser- 
vant. Thou knewest that I am an austere man, taking up 
that which I laid not down, and reaping that which I did 
not sow; wherefore then gavest not thou my money into 
the bank, and at my coming I should have required it 
with interest? And he said unto them that stood by, Take 
away from him the pound, and give it to him that hath 
ten pounds. And they said unto him, Lord, he hath 
ten pounds. I say unto you, That unto every one that 
hath shall be given; but from him that hath not, even that 
which he hath shall be taken away from him. But these 
mine enemies which would not that I should reign over 
them, bring hither, and slay them before me. And when 
he had spoken, he went on before, going up to Jerusalem.” 


Near the northern shore of the Dead Sea, the 
road turned west and began the rapid ascent into 
the mountainous country of Jerusalem. Through 
Jericho, vivid with the traditions of a thousand 
years, they went on their way up toward the eastern 
slope of the Mount of Olives; a band of thousands of 
men and women, at the front of whom marched the 
Twelve with the determined figure of Jesus himself 
leading them all. As they approached the end of 
this strange journey, its seriousness and its danger 
gradually impressed itself upon them all. This delib- 


156 JESUS THE MANn 


erate attempt to take possession of the great city 
of Judaism, which seemed so simple to them when 
they were still in Galilee, confident in the super- 
natural powers of their leader and in the assurance 
of the prophets, when it now was near its com- 
pletion became a colossal undertaking.”. The Twelve 
themselves were amazed and the great mass who 
crowded behind them were afraid, but there was no 
weakening in the purpose or in the forward move- 
ment of the man who walked grimly and steadily be- 
fore them, who had already determined to give up 
his life if it was necessary, to fulfill the prophecies 
and bring to the world the Kingdom of God. He 
again advised his disciples of the personal disaster 
which awaited him, but there wag no hesitation as 
he went on toward it. 


*Mark, 10:32-34, Professor Turner (The Study of the New 
Testament p 62, 1) finds “fa serious difficulty in the exegesis of 
these verses,”’ which disappears as soon as they are taken in their 
literal meaning. The classic idea, that only the twelve accom- 
panied Jesus to Jerusalem, misses the heart of the whole transac- 
tion. No one who has followed the story to this point will have 
any doubt that any attempt to change the text as Professor Turner 
suggests, so as to eliminate the mass of followers, will do absolute 
violence to the facts as shown in the entire record from Caesarea 
Philippi on. ; 





CHAPTER XII 


Tue Messtanic Entry To JERUSALEM 


On Friday night previous to the week which has 
been the focus of the eyes of the world to a greater 
extent than any other similar period in its history, 
Jesus abode at Jericho, about sixteen miles from 
Jerusalem, in the home of a rich publican named 
Zaccheus. This man was no doubt one of those to 
whom some of the seventy had spoken, for Jesus 
seemed to recognize him at sight, and said to him, 
‘‘This day I must abide at thy house.’’ Evidently 
this occurred according to a prearranged plan. It 
is likely that arrangements of this kind were part of 
the duty of those who were sent ahead of him. At 
any rate we have record of instances during this trip 
where Jesus was entertained by persons of import- 
ance, which indicates that advance information of 
his coming had been available. Even without the 
record it would be entirely reasonable to presume 
that so formidable an undertaking would have been 
carefully planned, the stages marked out, and pro- 
visions made for housing and food. 


1Tuke 19:1-10. 


"Luke 11:37; 14:1-24; 19:1-10. Luke 14:1-6 however, while 
placed among the events of the march, probably occurred 
much earlier, for the Sabbath question had its prominence much 
earlier, and unless he traveled extraordinarily slowly, he could 
not have spent a Sabbath on this march. It very likely occurred 
during the Capernaum period of Mark 3:1-6; Matthew 12:9-14. 
These three look like variants of the same story. 

[157] 


158 JESUS THE Man 


On Saturday night they halted near the village 
of Bethany, on the southeastern slope of the Mount 
of Olives, a great hill which fronts Jerusalem on 
the east. Here dwelt a family of two sisters, Martha 
and Mary, and a brother, Simon, whose hospitality 
has made them famous through all generations. It 
is not possible to be certain, but it is likely that 
Jesus spent the night at this home. Mary, especial- 
ly, seems to have been impressed by the message of 
Jesus and to have become deeply attached to him.’ 

From the village of Bethany around the southern 
side of the hill, down its western slope, across the 
deep and precipitous gorge called the Brook Kidron 
and through the eastern gate to the Temple, was 
some two miles. On the morning of Sunday, Jesus 
prepared to carry out his plan to fulfill a well-known 
prophecy concerning the coming of the Messiah. 

In the Book of Zechariah, the prophet, (c. 9:9) 
is a passage which was universally believed to de- 
scribe the coming of the Messiah to his holy city: 

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter 
of Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee; he is 


just, and saved; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even upon 
a colt the foal of an ass.” 


The belief in the necessity of the fulfillment of 


> Luke 10:38-42. That he at least partook of the evening 
meal there is indicated by the statement in vy. 38 that he entered 
into the house while they were “on the way.” This could not have 
occurred after the Messianic entry of the next day, and must have 
been subsequent to the stay at Jericho. Bethany was a good 
day’s journey from Jericho for a multitude composed of all ages 
and both sexes,—some 18 or 14 miles, with an increase in eleva- 
tion of 3000 feet. 





Tue Messtanic Entry 159 


this prophecy was no doubt one of the reasons which 
caused Jesus to undertake the trip to Jerusalem. 
Many other such prophecies, believed to be appli- 
cable to the coming of the Messianic kingdom, must 
have pressed upon his consciousness as obligations 
upon him. In order to bring in the Kingdom, he be- 
lieved he must first fulfill all the scriptures appli- 
cable to the Kingdom. 

No doubt the disciples who had been sent before 
had made arrangements for this occasion. At any 
rate, arrangements had been made by someone. He 
sent two of his disciples into a neighboring vil- 
lage’ with instructions to bring with them an ass 
which had never yet been ridden, which they would 
find tied there, assuring them that the owner would 
promptly give permission upon the disciples making 
the statement which had previously been agreed up- 
on as a signal. This was carried out according to the 
plan; the disciples cast their garments on the back 
of the beast, and Jesus sat thereon and with his fol- 
lowers in procession both behind and before him, in 
the midst of a multitude began what has generally 
been described as the triumphal entry, but which 
should be more accurately described as the Messi- 
anic approach to Jerusalem. 

The crowds in advance of him threw their gar- 
ments in the road as he started down the steep slope 


‘Matthew 26:54, 56; Mark, 14:49. 


SMatthew 21:1-9; Mark 11:1-10; Luke 19:29:38. Evidently 
Jesus spent the night at Bethany and sent to Bethphage for the 
colt. 


160 JESUS THE MAN 


at the lower part of the Mount of Olives. Others 
went into the fields thereabout and pulled branches 
from the trees and brought them to cast into the way. 
As they went they chanted a chorus—‘‘ Hosanna to 
the Son of David, blessed is he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord; blessed is the kingdom that com- 
eth, the kingdom of our Father David; hosanna in 
the highest.’’ 

The very language of this chant is found in one 
of the Messianic psalms.’ It was another of the 
Messianic prophecies that must be fulfilled, and 
since it was sung by everybody in the procession, 
had no doubt been chosen by previous plan. It an- 
nounced in distinct terms their expectation—that 
‘‘the kingdom of our Father David cometh;’’ that 
the age-long promise to their race was about to be 
fulfilled. 

For it is certain that at this time Jesus’ mind was 
full of prophecies which he must fulfill and that he 
was engaged in deliberately fulfilling these proph- 
ecies with the purpose that all the things which were 
required to occur prior to the coming of the King- 
dom of God should occur and thereby the Kingdom 
be permitted to come. 

It was this spirit of willingness to spend himself 
to the uttermost in order to bring about the King- 
dom of God, or to remove obstacles which might pre- 
vent the coming of the Kingdom of God, which gave 


‘Psalm 118:26. This psalm was of much interest to Jesus. 
We find him again quoting this language as he leaves the temple 
and using y. 22, 23 in his arguments with the Pharisees in the 


Tue Messianic Entry 161 


to these last days their wondertul value, and makes 
him the most heroie figure of all the ages, the high- 
est example of devotion to an unselfish ideal. 

The entrance of this multitude with Jesus at its 
head stirred the city to its depths.” We could wish 
to know how many there really were to justify the 
tremendous effect he had upon the city, and the in- 
timidation which they imposed upon the Jewish 
leaders the next day. Luke speaks of them as being 
many thousands, so great a crowd that they trod 
upon one another, much earlier in the course of the 
journey. It can readily be believed that those who 
followed him in on the evening of that eventful 
Sunday must have been genuinely an immense mul- 
titude as measured by the standards of that time and 
place, running high into the thousands, and suffi- 
cient to overflow the city and place its population 
and authorities in extreme apprehension. 

Except to the most important and best informed 
of the authorities, who had been advised of his pre- 
vious activities, Jesus was at this time unknown to 
the people of Jerusalem, as his entire work had been 
done in Galilee. The population who watched the 
surging multitude crowd through the streets and 
about the temple area inquired and demanded eag- 
erly who this might be. The answer from the mul- 


temple. As used by the multitude it did not indicate that they 
looked upon him as the son of David; it merely indicated that 
they were expecting the immediate coming of the kingdom of 
David and with it the long expected son of David to be its head. 


"Matthew 21:10, 11. 


162 JESUS THE MAN 


titude was, ‘‘This is the prophet Jesus, from Naz- 
areth of Galilee.’’ 

It is interesting to note that even yet the belief 
that Jesus was the Messiah had not been com- 
municated by Jesus or by the twelve to the multi- 
tude. Even those who had followed him from Gal- 
ilee to witness at Jerusalem the change of the age 
and the coming of the Kingdom of God when asked 
who he was, responded—*‘The prophet, Jesus,’’— 
not ‘‘the Son of God,”’ or ‘‘the Anointed of God,’’ or 
even ‘‘The Son of David.’’ 

At the time of Peter’s confident statement at 
Caesarea Philippi, Jesus had cautioned the twelve 
not to make it known that he was the Christ, and 
they had followed the instruction well. In the minds 
of the multitude he entered Jerusalem as the an- 
nunciator of the Kingdom, not as the Anointed One. 
He was still ‘a prophet as one of the prophets.”’ 

This procedure had involved a large part of the 
day. Jesus entered into the temple, looked around 
about on all things there, observed the conditions 
prevailing; but now that the day was well spent, 
withdrew and returned to Bethany,’ leaving for the 
morrow the achievement which would make it the 
most triumphant day of his life. 


®Mark 11:11; Matthew 21:17. 


CHAPTER AIT 


He Takes Possession OF THE TEMPLE 


With the new day, Jesus returned from Bethany 
to the Temple. Where the multitude who accom- 
panied him had spent the night, we have no informa- 
tion. We may perhaps be permitted to wonder 
whether they remained together as a more or less 
compact body, returning with Jesus to Bethany and 
encamping over the Mount of Olives, or were scatter- 
ed throughout the streets of Jerusalem. But from 
the extent to which he was able to over-awe the 
temple authorities, it is evident that they were with 
him when he returned to the temple the next day. 

The system of structures which was known un- 
der the general term ‘‘the temple’’ was an immense 
institution. It was situated on the summit of the 
ridge which constituted the eastern section of Jeru- 
salem, extending north and south between two deep 
valleys with almost precipitous sides. The top of 
the ridge in its natural state was not large enough 
to accommodate the buildings of the temple, so it 
had been artificially extended. Stupendous walls 
of immense stones had been constructed from the 

Our information as to the construction and appearance of 
the temple is drawn from Josephus, the Talmud, and the many 
references in the Bible. In his study of “Jerusalem in Bible 
Times” Dr. Paton has assembled all this information with full 
references to the original authorities. A wonderful pictured re- 
construction of the Temple according to these authorities is con- 


tained in Dr. Sanday’s “Sacred Sites of the Gospels”. 
[163] 


164 JESUS THE Man 


bottom of the valley to a height even with the sum- 
mit of the hill, a height reliably represented to have 
been over four hundred feet. The space between 
these walls and the hill itself was partly made into 
chambers for various uses appurtenant to the 
temple, and partly filled in, so that upon the top 
there was finally furnished a level space that might 
be roughly described as three city blocks square, a 
total of approximately nine blocks. In the midst of 
this space, somewhat nearer to the west side of it, 
raised some distance above the level of the rest 
of the platform, was the temple itself, facing the 
east, a marvelous structure, 150 feet long, 90 feet 
wide, and 150 feet high, built of blocks of white 
marble, partly sheathed over with plates of gold. 
Surrounding it at different levels were the dif- 
ferent courts, the Court of Priests, the Court of 
Israel, and the Court of Women. About this central 
mass of structures was the spacious Court of the 
Gentiles, separated from the inner courts by a bal- 
ustrade 414 feet high, within which Gentiles were 
prohibited from entering under pain of immediate 
death. Surrounding the entire structure, on the 
north, east, and west, at its outer margin, was a 
porch 45 feet wide, formed by two rows of white 
marble columns almost 40 feet high, supporting a 
cedar roof; on the south was a similar porch, twice 
as wide, supported by four rows of columns, and 
two stories high. This broad porch on the south 
was known as the ‘‘royal porch,’’ the one on the 
east as ‘‘Solomon’s porch.’’ At this time these 


He Taxes PossEssion OF THE TEMPLE 165 


porches were under reconstruction; they were de- 
stroyed by fire during a tumult in the time of Arch- 
elaus’ and were not entirely rebuilt until the time of 
Nero. 

This spacious structure, consisting chiefly of 
open area, was obviously capable of containing an 
immense number of people, and was the focus of the 
entire Jewish race. Hither at the time of the an- 
nual feasts, such as the present occasion, when the 
Passover was very near at hand, came Jews from 
all over the world in countless numbers, one esti- 
mate placing the total number of visitors present 
at one time at more than two million, seven hundred 
thousand people.’ Inasmuch as one purpose of all 
these visitors was to have some sacrifice performed 
on their behalf, an immense organization of 
priests must have been maintained for the purpose 
of conducting these sacrifices. Kach sacrifice was 
a specific act, requiring for its completion the 
slaughter of a bird or an animal, according to the 
purpose of the sacrifice and the financial condition of 
the person offering the sacrifice, as determined by 
the complicated ceremonial system of Moses. These 
people, who had come from almost every quarter of 
the inhabited globe in order to have these sacrifices 
offered for them, must supply the animals, which un- 
der the circumstances it was for the most part im- 
possible for them to bring with them. Therefore they 


ORCDHUS, VW Arseliy ill, Antiq: AVIS, sy 1, 25 ibid. XX) ix3c7. 


*’Josephus, Wars VI, ix, 38. 


166 JESUS THE MAN 


must secure these animals after their arrival in Je- 
rusalem. The most convenient place to acquire them 
would naturally be in the neighborhood of the temple 
itself, and because of that fact an immense business 
had been built up in the temple area, under the di- 
rection of the leading priests, and for their profit. 
Booths were operated throughout the Court of the 
Gentiles from which the visiting Israelite could pur- 
chase the sacrifice required for his purpose. As a 
necessary adjunct thereto, a system of money chang- 
ing was built up, whereby the foreign money brought 
by the visitors from all over the world might be con- 
verted into the current coin of Jerusalem and made 
available for the purchases and for the gifts which 
were to be deposited in the temple treasury. 

It requires no stretch of imagination to compre- 
hend that the prices at which this service was ren- 
dered would be exorbitant, or that such prices would 
arouse the keenest criticism and antagonism from 
those who were subjected to them. The conduct of 
this business had made the family of the High 
Priest and of the other Jewish family which was in 
continuous competition with it and which shared in 
this business, immensely rich, and had done as much 
as any other one thing to arouse against the priestly 
class the antagonism which was shown in the speech 
of John the Baptist and of Jesus throughout Galilee, 
and which was no doubt approved by their hearers. 
The Jew’s eagerness for gain is proverbial and was 
no less during the age we are describing than it is to- 
day. The priesthood among the Jews was an occu- 


He Taxes PosskESSION OF THE TEMPLE 167 


pation determined by inheritance,’ which required no 
more religious enthusiasm and no more keenly de- 
veloped moral sense than any other occupation. 
There is no reason to assume that stricter honesty 
prevailed in all the countless transactions which oc- 
curred within the temple area than prevailed in sim- 
ilar transactions out in the body of the city itself. 

So great had this business become that it was the 
dominating feature of the temple. The whole temple 
area was permeated with the atmosphere of com- 
merce. At this time, on Monday before the Passov- 
er to be celebrated on Saturday, we can easily pic- 
ture to ourselves the accumulating mass of animals 
and birds in preparation for the gathering crowds, 
and the confusion and noise incident to the vast 
business. 

Into this unreligious, selfish, commercialized insti- 
tution Jesus had come to complete the requirements 
preliminary to the coming of the Kingdom of God, 
and to inaugurate that Kingdom. 

Here he expected his message to be heard and 
hoped that the multitude of the Jerusalemites and 
the other Jews would hear him, and with a changed 
heart believe the good tidings and so open their lives 
to God, that the Kingdom of Heaven would come 
upon them. But it was obvious that in such an at- 
mosphere as this, it would be impossible to secure 
a hearing. Among such surroundings there was no 


‘The decendants of Aaron were priests, all of whom were 
drawn from that tribe. 


168 JESUS THE Man 


possibility that an ideal conception such as he of- 
fered could receive consideration. 

His soul burned within him as he saw the extent 
to which those who led the destinies of Israel had 
failed of their high opportunities and responsibili- 
ties. Here was no religious feeling; here was only 
cold, selfish, sordid commercialism. With him was 
a multitude sufficient to support him in any action 
that he might undertake, and he did not hesitate.’ 

Making a scourge of small cords, and enforcing 
his demands both by the power of his presence and 
by the weight of the multitude of his followers, 
ready to apply force if necessary, he ordered those 
who were conducting the offending institution to 
leave the temple enclosure. ‘‘Itis written,’’ he said, 
‘*My house shall be called a house of prayer for all 
the nations,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.’” 
This was not done gently. Where the offenders did 
not move rapidly enough, he overthrew the tables of 
the money changers and the booths of them that 
sold the animals, and speedily swept the whole mass, 
birds, sheep, cattle, dealers and bankers with their 
attendants out of the temple enclosure. 

He did not stop with the mere removal of the of- 
fending dealers and bankers. He took over the con- 
trol of the entire temple enclosure. To do this he 
must have over-awed by his presence and the num- 


‘Mark 11:15-18; Matthew 21:12, 138; Luke 19:45-48, 
‘Isaiah 56:7. ‘Jeremiah 7:11. 


He Taxes PosskEssion OF THE TEMPLE 169 


ber of his followers, even the priests who were in 
charge of the temple, and the police through which 
they maintained order. For this day at least, they 
were all thoroughly terrorized and subdued. Jesus 
and his followers were in complete control of the 
entire temple area, and would not permit any man 
so much as to carry a vessel through the enclosure. 
For this one day at least, the temple was held sacred 
for the purpose for which it was founded,—that of 
the worship of God. Whether this was a part of the 
plan of Jesus in coming to Jerusalem, or merely the 
outgrowth of a sudden flash of anger at the outrage 
which he saw being perpetrated, we cannot tell posi- 
tively, but in either case, he was at least temporarily 
successful. For that day, he was the supreme power 
in the center of the Jewish nation. Surrounded by 
great crowds of enthusiastic followers, all others ei- 
ther swept out of his way or subdued into silence 
and acquiescence, he maintained control of the 
temple, the heart itself of his people. It is quite 
probable that the event was a part of his plan. Judg- 
ing from his expressions of disappointment later, 
he seems to have expected that he would here find 
the same type of recognition which had greeted him 
in his journeys through Galilee, hoping that through 
the submission of the entire nation to his demands, 
acting as he believed himself to be as the direct rep- 
resentative of God, the nation would repent and 
make itself fit for the coming of the Kingdom, which 
should then appear. 

Information of this audacious stroke and its sue- 


170 JESUS THE Man 


cess speedily swept over Jerusalem. Not only were 
the dispossessed priests and the High Priest, the 
head of the nation, whose authority was thus flouted, 
filled with amazement and anger, but another au- 
thority, which had been as freely set at naught, was 
immediately informed and deeply interested. 

Herod Antipas also was a visitor in Jerusalem 
at this time. True to his Jewish bringing up, he 
came with the other thousands of Jews to the central 
city of that race to participate in this most sacred 
of its festivals. As the word quickly sped from lip 
to lip who Jesus was and whence he came, it was 
most natural that the dispossessed and temporarily 
intimidated priests should hurry to Herod with in- 
formation concerning the confusion and damage 
his unruly subject and his followers were making.’ 
He and his officers were no doubt little less aston- 
ished than were the chief priests to find this Galilean 
preacher, who only a short time before had been a 
fugitive from his authority, exiled into foreign 
parts, all at once in Jerusalem at the head of a 
multitude great enough to over-awe the most power- 
ful authorities of the Jewish nation, and actually in 
physical control of the great temple itself. 

The situation was an emergency and called for 
immediate action on the part of the authorities. 
But for this day they were unable to act to any ad- 


®’The representatives of Herod were present with the priests 
on the next day when they exhausted their ingenuity in their at- 
tempt to trap him. The information probably reached Herod on 
Monday. Matthew 22:16. 


He Taxes PosskssIon OF THE TEMPLE 171 


vantage. ‘'he thing had come upon them suddenly 
and unexpectedly and they were unprepared to cope 
with it at once. They immediately determined to de- 
stroy this—as it seemed to them—upstart adven- 
turer, but the purpose was much easier to arrive at 
than its fulfillment. Herod, outside of his own ter- 
ritory, was without authority and was not on good 
terms with the Roman officers in Jerusalem. The 
Roman procurator, or governor, Pilate, was a man 
who was entirely out of sympathy with the Jews, 
refused to become interested in the numerous local 
disturbances which arose among them, and would not 
participate in any matter in which he was not al- 
ready personally interested, unless it involved some 
infraction of his own orders or of the general Roman 
laws. Without such help they were entirely unable 
to meet Jesus with force, for the multitude cf his 
followers was greater than the limited physical force 
which they could instantly muster. In the mean- 
time Jesus stood in the temple and preached his 
message to the assembling multitude, who now 
crowded about him. As the word went about con- 
cerning him, and what he had done in the previous 
months of Galilee, those who had come to the feast 
as well no doubt as the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 
brought their sick and blind and lame to him in the 
temple and he healed them.’ Impressed with the 
events of the day, a great exaltation possessed the 
multitude and the same results that occurred among 


*Matthew 21:14-16; Luke 19:39, 40. 


Alea JESUS THE Man 


the crowds of Galilee naturally followed. Many of 
those who had ailments of various kinds were so im- 
pressed by the personality of the great man who 
spoke to them and whom they had just seen in ac- 
tion, and by the enthusiastic and contagious confi- 
dence of the crowd about them that they became re- 
lieved of their disorders, unconscious of their pain 
and limitations and felt themselves participating in 
their own bodies in the divine power which they now 
were sure issued from the person of Jesus. 

Surrounded as he was by these multitudes who 
hung upon his words, the priests and temple author- 
ities, Jealous and resentful though they were, and 
determined to destroy him, could find no way to 
come at him.” They heard the children in the temple 
repeating the chant they had heard their elders 
shout—‘* Hosanna to the Son of David.’’ The priests 
recognized the meaning of this ery; the Messianic 
implication contained in it was obvious and it arous- 
ed in them intense indignation. Those priests who 
were near him and observing him closely called his 
attention to it, saying, ‘‘Hearest thou what these 
are saying?’’ But he, convinced that the great 
Messianic prophecies were now being fulfilled, con- 
fident because of his success that God was truly with 
him, that the multitudes were turning towards him, 
and through him towards the Most High, eried ‘‘ Yea, 
Yea, I tell you that if these shall hold their peace, 
the stones will ery out.’’ 


*Luke 19 :47-48. 


Her Taxes Possession OF THE TEMPLE 173 


The day ended. Surrounded by his faithful fol- 
lowers, he again withdrew to Bethany, filled with 
the consciousness of success, confident in the hope 
that his expectations were to be fulfilled. 

He felt no need to protect his success by arrang- 
ing to hold the control of the temple; God would 
protect it. To him this whole procedure was the 
assurance of the coming of the Kingdom, which no 
devices of men could prevent. 


CHAPTER XIV 


Tue ARGUMENT IN THE TEMPLE—THE AUTHORITIES 
TRIUMPH 


With the return of the day, Jesus returned early 
to the scene of his triumph. No doubt surrounded 
still by the multitude, which over-ran the temple en- 
closure, he prepared to continue his discourses of 
the day before, announcing the coming of the King- 
dom. 

But the temple authorities and chief priests, who 
had recovered from the panic of the day before and 
were unwilling further to surrender possession of 
the temple to him, met him at once with a challenge.’ 
‘‘By what authority’’ they said ‘*doest thou these 
things? Who gave you this authority?’’ Apparent- 
ly all the authority of the nation was present to 
make this challenge; the temple officials, the lawyers, 
the chiefs of the priestly order and the members of 
the Sanhedrin, the great national court. 

The question was a dangerous one for Jesus. If 
he admitted that his action had been without author- 
ity, he certainly would have lost his influence with 
the multitude, which had recognized and supported 
the authority which he had assumed. His attitude 
upon the previous day had been imperious, superb, 
an assumption of an authority superior even to that 
of those in charge of the temple. To have admitted 


*Mark 11:27-33; Matthew 21:23-27; Luke 20:1-8. 
[174] 


Tur ARGUMENT IN THE TEMPLE 175 


that he had no authority, would have been to undo 
all that he had accomplished, to drop immediately to 
the level of an interloper, not entitled to be support- 
ed and consequently, of course, certain to be aban- 
doned. Upon the other hand, if he claimed an au- 
thority, he would immediately bring himself into 
conflict with the government of Pilate. The Roman 
governor would not interfere in the religious squab- 
bles of his subjects but would have been very prompt 
to act had any one appeared attempting to exercise 
an authority independent of the Romans.’ And 
Jesus could not claim that he held any authority 
from Pilate. 

Instead of answering directly, he did a much more 
effective thing. He turned the situation upon his an- 


7To understand this situation and much of the course of the 
next few days it is necessary to remember precisely the relation 
between the active governmental factors. Since the deposition 
of Archelaus, son of Herod the Great and brother of Herod An- 
tipas, Judea and Samaria had been an imperial Roman province, 
governed by a procurator responsible to the emperor. This gov- 
ernment had not suspended the Jewish municipal government from 
their control over their temple, but had deprived the Jewish auth- 
orities of the power to inflict the death penalty without confirma- 
tion of their sentence by the procurator. The Jewish government 
was conducted by a council of seventy, known as the Great Sanhe- 
drin, assisted by several inferior tribunals, also called Sanhedrin, 
with smailer and varying numbers. The high priest was president 
of the Sanhedrin and consequently of the nation. The Sanhedrin 
was largely composed of priests, and they operated according to 
the Mosaic law as developed and expanded by the scribes or law- 
yers. The temple had a police force under the direction of the 
High Priest subject to the Great Sanhedrin, and the Jewish au- 
thorities were apparently permitted to operate the peace officers 
of the city so long as they were able to prevent tumult. The Ro- 
man government maintained a force of soldiers in the Castle 


176 JESUS THE Man 


tagonists by a move that placed them in turn upon 
the defensive. ‘‘I also ask you a question,”’ he said, 
‘Cand if you answer my question, I likewise will tell 
you by what authority I do these things.. The bap- 
tism of John, whence was it? from Heaven or from 
men ?’’ 

This was a poser. The questioners in their turn 
debated how to reply to him. The problem of John 
was a difficult one for them. In the popular excite- 
ment raised by him, they had maintained their bal- 
ance, and had not accepted his Messianic message as 
true. They considered the whole movement begun 
by him as a people led astray by an enthusiast. But 
they were in the minority. Most of the Jews of all 
classes believed that John was a true prophet. 

They reasoned with themselves—‘‘If we shall say 


of Antonia, a short distance from the northwest corner of the 
temple and directly connected with it by a protected gallery. 
Herod had no governmental authority whatever in Jerusalem; 
he was in the position of a visiting potentate, whose powers when 
at home were practically equivalent to those of the Roman 
procurator in Jerusalem, and who consequently was entitled to 
every courtesy from him. Great numbers of his Jewish sub- 
jects, especially from Galilee, were in Jerusalem every year at 
the Passover, and as they were the most unruly and turbulent of 
all the Jews they were frequently in conflict with the Roman 
authorities. One such instance had occurred shortly before the 
arrival of Jesus’ multitude and Pilate’s severity had produced a 
strained relationship between him and Herod. (Luke 13:1; 
23:12). The Jerusalem population, especially during feast times 
when the city was crowded with visitors, was given to frequent 
and violent tumults, which frequently were ended only by the 
use of great violence by the Romans in suppressing them, and a 
consequent increase in the rigidity of restrictions placed upon the 
Jews. Some of them cost lives into the thousands in their sup- 
pression. 


THe ARGUMENT IN THE TEMPLE 177 


this baptism was from heaven, he will then ask us, 
Why then did you not believe him? But if we shall 
say from men’’—the fear of the multitude, present 
and practically surrounding them, came over them. 
It would not be safe in that crowd to deny that John 
was a true prophet. They did the only safe thing. 
They said, ‘‘ We do not know.”’ 

Jesus was released from his uncomfortable situa- 
tion. If they were unable to answer his question, 
he was under no obligation to answer theirs. ‘‘Nei- 
ther do I tell you,’ he said, ‘‘by what authority I 
do these things.”’ 

This opposition was not what Jesus had expected. 
The success of the previous day, when everybody 
had recognized his authority, even the priests and 
temple authorities themselves being subdued and 
silent in the presence of the overwhelming force 
which he presented, had given him a right to expect 
that to-day all Jerusalem would be ready to accept 
his message as had Galilee. This unexpected and 
antagonistic greeting, indicating unquestionably 
that the rulers of the nation would not admit his 
authority, aroused intense feeling in him. His was 
not a nature that readily brooked opposition. Be- 
heving as he did that he was the Messiah, the chosen 
of God, the idea of opposition, of resistance to his 
will, was discordant and obnoxious in the extreme. 
Wherever, in the record of his brief career, we find 
him in contact with critics or opponents, we find evi- 
dence of irritation and anger, just as in this instance. 

In addition, no doubt on this occasion the author- 


178 JESUS THE Man 


ities had taken advantage of the night to make them- 
selves safe against any repetition of the experience 
of the day before. Then they had been taken by sur- 
prise, with no expectation of any such outbreak as 
he had without warning aroused in their midst, and 
did not have enough guard or police to present any 
effective opposition to the program which he so 
promptly carried out. No doubt upon this day the 
temple was fully guarded. We are told nothing 
about the presence of the merchants or the bank- 
ers, but it can readily be assumed that they were 
back in their accustomed places with enough pro- 
tection to prevent a new disaster like the other. 
Prudence prevented them from any attempt to ar- 
rest him, surrounded as he was by the multitude of 
his followers, but their desire and their purpose 
were plainly apparent. 

The bitterness rising in him at this change in his 
circumstances speedily showed itself in his language. 
Instead of speaking further to the multitude, he 
turned upon the priests and the authorities who 
were opposing him. In three wonderfully vivid 
figurative discourses, he began to show to them 
that in the coming Kingdom of Heaven they should 
have no part. ‘‘Even the publicans and the harlots 
go into the Kingdom of God before you,’’ he said. 
**The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you 
and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits there- 
Of 


*Matthew 21:28 -22:14; Mark 12:1-12; Luke 20:9-19. The 


Tue ARGUMENT IN THE TEMPLE 179 


The priests and the Pharisees in their turn, as 
they listened to this bold attack upon them, were 
still more incensed and more desirous than ever 
to seize him. But the multitude that then filled 
the temple was still predominantly composed of the 
friends of Jesus. The priests and their officers 
were in a small minority. They might resist an at- 
tempt upon his part, but it was not safe to attempt 
to lay hands upon him; they would do well to pre- 
vent a repetition of the scene of the day before. It 
was evident that with their own authority they would 
not be able to handle the situation; even under the 
changed circumstances it was unsafe. 

So their leaders left the temple and sought counsel 
with the servants of Herod. That prince, eager up- 
on his own part to gain possession of the man who 
for months had been troubling him in Galilee and 
Perea, entered readily into consultation as to the 
best method to use in dealing with the problem. He, 
outside of his own tetrachy, visitor in the dominions 
of another potentate, with whom at that time he was 
on very unfriendly terms, had no power of his own 
to furnish in dealing with the problem. But the 
crafty intelligence of himself or of some of his fol- 
lowers proposed a plan which would enlist the only 
power capable of dealing with the situation; this is, 
they planned together to bring him into conflict with 
the Roman authorities. 


vineyard narable is founded on Isaiah’s vineyard parable, found 
in Isaiah 5:1-7. 


*Mark 12:13-17; Matthew 22:15-22; Luke 20:20-26. 


180 JESUS THE Man 


The fact that Jesus and his followers were from 
Galilee suggested an easy method of doing that. 
Galilee was the home of the bitterest and most per- 
sistent opposition to the Roman authority and the 
Roman taxes. It was perfectly rational to suppose 
that a Galilean, the leader of a tumult of this type, 
was a participant in the Galilean spirit of resist- 
ance to the Roman tribute. It was upon this precise 
point that the Roman authority was most jealous 
and most rigid. Let him but declare that it was un- 
lawful to give tribute to Caesar, and the Roman 
legions would be brought upon him as soon as a 
message could be taken to the Roman governor. 

Accordingly, emissaries of the joint conspiracy 
scattered themselves among the multitude which sur- 
rounded Jesus, apparently listening with interest 
and approval; and then when the opportunity pre- 
sented itself, they proposed their question, pref- 
acing it with an unctuous compliment intended to 
disarm him and allay suspicion. ‘‘Teacher, we know 
that thou art true, and of a truth teachest the way 
of God, and carest not for any one; for thou regard- 
est not the person of men. Is it lawful to give trib- 
ute unto Caesar or not? Shall we give, or shall we 
not give?’’ 

This again was a two-edged sword. This Rom- 
an tax was the bitterest part of the humiliation of 
the Jews. Not only was it burdensome, but it 
seemed to the Jews a direct usurpation of the au- 
thority of God, to whom alone they owed their al- 
legiance and their substance. It was a continuous 


Tur ARGUMENT IN THE TEMPLE 181 


reminder of their degradation as a people, that 
they must take money that they believed they owed 
only to God, and pay it over to a heathen foreign 
prince. One of the greatest causes of the unpopu- 
larity of the classes which ruled Jerusalem was the 
fact that they were compelled to be unwilling but ef- 
fective assistants of the Empire in securing the sub- 
mission of the people to the collection of this hated 
tax. If Jesus should say that this tax was lawful, 
his influence with the crowds would not last a mo- 
ment. Those who had so enthusiastically followed 
and aided him would be ready almost to turn upon 
him and destroy him, for not one of them but be- 
lieved most intensely that the tax was unlawful and 
an abomination. Upon the other hand, if he should 
say that the tax was not lawful, he would instantly 
be in the hands of his enemies, for the Roman sol- 
diers with Pilate the governor were housed practi- 
cally at the very corner of the temple enclosure, 
and it would have required only time for the infor- 
mation to be carried to Pilate that the leader of a 
tumult in the temple was proclaiming the tax to be 
unlawful, to find him placed under arrest for trea- 
son to the Empire. Jesus instantly divined their 
purpose and for the second time that day he showed 
a quickness of wit and a skill in avoiding a dilemma 
which have never been surpassed in any re- 
corded experience. ‘*Why do ye make trial of me, 
ye hypocrites?’’ he said. ‘‘Show me the coin in 
which the tribute is paid.’’ They showed him a 
denarius, a little Roman silver coin which carried 


182 JESUS THE Man 


the bust of the Emperor together with an inscrip- 
tion. ‘‘Whose is this image’’ he said, ‘‘and whose 1s 
this superscription?’’ They answered ‘‘Caesar’s.’’ 
Then came the astonishing response, utterly differ- 
ent from anything that his enemies had expected :— 
‘‘Render then unto Caesar the things that are Cae- 
sar’s and unto God the things that are God’s. 

As a response to their question, it was perhaps 
not frank, nor direct. It was not properly a reply to 
the query that had been addressed to him. But the 
inquiry had not been made for the purpose of infor- 
mation or enlightenment, but solely for the purpose 
of entangling him in difficulties. As an avoidance 
of this difficulty, as an answer which offended nei- 
ther the ruler nor the people who hated him, it was 
a masterpiece and those who had set the trap for him 
departed astonished and disappointed. 

Foiled in their attempt to ensnare him upon the po- 
litical side, some of the Sadducees’ attempted to 
break his position by causing him to appear ridicu- 

*The Pharisees and Sadducees were at the same time the two 
great political parties of the Jews and two hostile schools of 
religious and philosophical thought. The Pharisees were for the 
most part Messianists and idealists; the Sadducees were prac- 
tical and materialistic in the extreme. The Sadducees were not 
adherents to the spirit of the great legal and ceremonial system 
built up by the Pharisees; to them the whole law was contained 
in the five books of Moses and they refused the doctrine of 
the resurrection which the Pharisees had developed with the 
Messianic idea. The high priest and his chief supporters were 
Sadducees. For the most part the actual rulers and those who 
were in closest relation with the Roman authority were Sad- 


ducees, who were more nearly practical politicians, able to trim 


their sails to the wind, than their more theoretic and idealistic 
compatriots. 


THE ARGUMENT IN THE TEMPLE 183 


lous and absurd before his followers. Hig apparent 
readiness to answer questions naturally suggested 
this method to the city-bred priests, who assumed 
that this countryman, probably unlettered and un- 
learned, would be at a loss in a contest of wits re- 
quiring skill in the scriptures. So they proposed to 
him a problem incident to his teaching of the resur- 
rection of the dead, which was an essential part of 
the Messianic belief, and which no doubt he had 
taught to the crowds in the temple the day before. 
In this they were completely disappointed and they 
too were sent away by a scriptural quotation to 
which they had no reply.’ 

Likewise, the Pharisees, the class who prided 
themselves upon their superior dialectical skill and 
their knowledge of the law, when they found that 
the countryman had been too much for their Sad- 
ducee associates, essayed in turn to demonstrate 
his ignorance by a new question.’ So one of their 
lawyers stood up and asked him, ‘‘T'eacher, which 
is the great commandment in the law?’’ Here there 
was no equivocation. Without hesitation came the 
great and profound answer, the definite statement 
of Jesus’ religious conception, which even until this 
day comprehends the deepest statement of religious 
truth which can be made: ‘*Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy might and with all thy 
soul and with all thy strength. This is the first and 


*Mark 12:18-27; Matthew 22:23-338; Luke 20:27-40. 
"Mark 12:2834; Matthew 22 :34-40. 


184. JESUS THE Man 


the great commandment. And a second is like unto 
it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’’ 

This scribe was evidently sincere and unable to 
refuse approval to the truth when he heard it. His 
reply, ‘‘ Thou hast well said, Teacher,’’ brought from 
Jesus the direct announcement to him of the 1mme- 
diate nearness of the Kingdom in which he immedi- 
ately assumed this scribe believed fully, and for 
which his answer showed him to be prepared: ** Thou 
art not far from the Kingdom of God.’” 

He now turned upon his discomfited hecklers the 
same method they had been using upon him. He 
asked them ‘‘ What think ye of the Christ? Whose 
son is he?’’ And when, in accordance with the cur- 
rent conception and the commonly quoted scriptures, 
they replied ‘‘ David’s,’’ he crushed them by quot- 
ing the well known Messianic expression: ‘‘How 
then doth David in the spirit call him Lord, saying, 
The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right 
hand while I put thine enemies under thy feet? If 
David then call him Lord, how is he his son?’” 

This they were unable to answer, to the delight 
of the common people, who to their pleasure in the 
message of the coming Kingdom added their satis- 
faction in the discomfiture of the hated Pharisees 
and priests.” 

‘This was more an announcement of the nearness of the King- 


dom to a man whom he believed to be fitted for participation in 
it than a statement to him of that fitness. 


*Matthew 22:41-46; Mark 12:35-37; Luke 20:41-44. 


“This dislike of the Romanizing rulers was much greater 


Tue AvuTHORITIES TRIUMPH 185 


But all this battle of wits, which no doubt had oe- 
cupied most of the day, could not conceal the fact 
that the rulers were again in possession of the tem- 
ple, that they did not accept either the person or 
the teaching of Jesus, that they were seeking every 
method to arrest him and destroy him. He had 
evidently failed. A longer stay was useless, and 
would speedily become unsafe for him. He prepared 
to abandon his attempt and depart. But before he 
left the temple for the last time, he turned to the 
assembled multitude and in the presence of the now 
triumphant Pharisees and rulers of the people de- 
livered to them a final excoriation, the like of which 
has seldom, if ever, fallen from the lips of man, 
saying :” 


“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat: all 
things therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do 
and observe; but do not ye after their works; for 
they say, and do not. Yea, they bind heavy burdens and 
grievious to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; 
but they themselves will not move them with their finger. 
But all their works they do for to be seen of men: for 


among the rebellious Galileans, who had never become recon- 
ciled to the Roman domination and who bitterly resented any 
recognition of it by their own rulers, Other causes of resent- 
ment, growing out of their excessive ceremonialism, their hypoc- 
risy, their dishonesty and covetousness, are revealed in the num- 
erous discourses of Jesus. What record we have of John’s words 
indicates a similar attitude towards them. 


“Matthew 23:2-7, 138-26. This discourse is much abbreviated 
in Mark 12:38-40, Luke 20:45-47. Luke has scattered parts of 
it through various places in his gospel, none of them appropri- 
ate for them. Matthew 23:8-12 is absolutely foreign to the rest 
of the discourse and should have no place init. It may be either 
a result of careless assembly upon the part of the author of 
Matthew, or an interpolation by an early scribe. 


186 JESUS THE Man 


they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the bor- 
ders of their garments, and love the chief place at feasts, 
and the chief seats in the synagogues, and the salutation 
in the market places, and to be called of men Rabbi. 

‘““But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! 
for ye shut the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye 
enter not in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are 
entering in to enter, 

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for 
ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when 
he is become so, ye make him two-fold more a son of 
Gehenna than yourselves. 

“Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever 
shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever 
shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! Ye 
fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the 
temple that hath sanctified the gold? And, Whosoever 
shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever 
sweareth by the gift that igs upon it, he is a debtor. Ye 
fools and blind: for which is greater, the gift, or the altar 
that sanctifieth the gift? He therefore that sweareth 
by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. 
And he that sweareth by the temple, sweareth by it, and 
by him that dwelleth therein. And he that sweareth by 
heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that 
sitteth thereon. 

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for 
ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone 
the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy 
and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not have 
left the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain out 
the gnat, and swallow a camel!” 

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for 
ye cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but 
within they are full from extortion and excess. Thou 
blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and 
platter, that the outside thereof may become clean also. 

‘““Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for 
ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which appear beau- 


THe AUTHORITIES TRIUMPH 187 


tiful outwardly, but are inwardly full of dead men’s bones, 
and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear 
righteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full of hypocrisy 
and iniquity. 

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for 
ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and garnish the 
tombs of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the 
days of our fathers, we should not have been partakers 
with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye 
witness unto yourselves that ye are sons of them which 
slew the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your 
fathers! Ye serpents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall 
ye escape the judgment of hell? 

“Therefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise 
men, and scribes: some of them ye shall kill and crucify; 
and some of them ye shall scourge in your synagogues, and 
persecute from city to city: that upon you may come all 
the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of 
Abel, the righteous, unto the blood of Zachariah, son of 
Barachiah, whom ye slew between the sanctuary and the 
altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come 
upon this generation.” 


The bitterness of feeling which is revealed in this 
terrific denunciation is not difficult to comprehend. 
That morning he had entered the temple, confident 
of his success and believing that the Kingdom of 
Heaven was ready to appear, through the voluntary 
submission of the nation to the will of God. At 
night he was leaving the temple, defeated, discour- 
aged, certainly in personal danger; all of which 
change was directly chargeable to these Pharisees 
and scribes, who not only refused to enter into the 
Kingdom themselves, but also by their action and in- 
terference had prevented those who desired to enter 
in and were ready to enter in, from entering. From 


188 JESUS THE MANn 


Capernaum to Jerusalem these cold, skeptical cere- 
monialists had continually interfered with him and 
with his message, and now at the end, when the goal 
was in sight, they had again thrust themselves be- 
tween the people and the Kingdom. These sentences 
which cut, burned, and seared, leaped like living fire 
from a great and well-founded indignation. 

He realized as he was departing that the hope of 
a quiet, peaceful arrival of the Kingdom by the turn- 
ing of the hearts of the people towards God and the 
acceptance by the nation of himself and the Kingdom 
which he would bring in, was past. It now was ap- 
parent that that great and terrible Day, of signs and 
wonders, tribulation and destruction, must precede 
the coming of the Kingdom. These evil powers which 
resisted the coming of the Kingdom must be destroy- 
ed out of the world before the world could be ready 
for it. | 

Looking out from the lofty structure which over- 
looked Jerusalem, he saw in imagination the trouble 
which was coming upon this fated city, which had 
now refused the only method that was open to it 
to avoid these tribulations. Tears came to him as he 
said :” 

“Tf thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things 


which belong unto peace! But now they are hid from 
thine eyes. For the day shall come upon thee, when thine 


UQuke 19:41-44; Matthew 23:37-39. Luke times his discourse 
at the conclusion of the Messianic entry, when there was no evi- 
dence whatever that Jerusalem would refuse his message. It is 
entirely out of place there. The only time when such a statement 
could be appropriate is that given by Matthew as located in the 


THe AUTHORITIES TRIUMPH 189 


enemies shall cast up a bank about thee and compass thee 
round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall dash thee 
to the ground, and thy children within thee; and they 
shall not leave thee one stone upon another; because thou 
knewest not the time of thy visitation. O Jerusalem, Jeru- 
salem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that 
are sent unto thee! How often would I have gathered thy 
children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens 
under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house 
is left unto you desolate, for I say unto you, ye shall not 
see me henceforth until ye shall say, Blessed is he that 
cometh in the name of the Lord.” 


Disappointed and bitter of spirit, he was leaving 
the temple with the express purpose of leaving the 
eity itself and returning no more until the actual 
coming of the Kingdom. This rebellious city, which 
had refused to join in the chorus chanted by his fol- 
lowers on that day when he entered it, was to see 
him no more until it too should fully join in the 
Messianic greeting—‘Blessed is he that cometh 
in the name of the Lord.’’ Apparently he intended 
at that time to leave Jerusalem, perhaps to return 
to his own Galilee, where the people believed in him 
with hearts ready for the Kingdom. 

Forgetting his previous difficulties in his tense 
emotion, he perhaps did not realize for the moment 
that for him there was no place to go. Here in Jeru- 
salem sought by the Jewish rulers, there in Galilee 


text, or possibly a short time after, when he sat on the Mount 
of Olives, looking back over the city. This last suggestion has 
to recommend it the fact that Luke places it in the same location. 
though at a different time. The time given in the text, however, 
seems more likely. The two reports are evidently parts of the 
same discourse. 


190 JESUS THE Man 


hunted by Herod, his condition was the same. Doubly 
true now was the striking expression with which he 
had greeted that enthusiastic follower who came to 
him in Perea, ‘‘The foxes have holes and the birds 
of the air have nests but the Son of Man hath not 
where to lay his head.”’ 


CHAPTER XV 


‘*WuHeEn SHALL THESE THINGS Br, anpD WHat SHALL 
Br THE Sien?’’ 


As Jesus and his followers went out from the 
temple, probably down through the eastern gate, to 
pass over the Mount of Olives to Bethany, some one 
of the Twelve who accompanied him, impressed by 
the grandeur of the tremendous structure they were 
leaving, called attention to that gigantic monument 
to the constructive capacity of Herod. They were 
quite justified in their admiration, for it was one of 
the wonders of the ancient world. Standing almost 
five hundred feet in the air, surrounded on at least 
three sides with sheer walls of massive stone, sur- 
mounted by those beautiful colonnades and dominat- 
ed above all by the majestic outlines of the temple it- 
self, its dazzling white marble rendered even more 
dazzling by its covering of sheets of pure gold, it 
was a sight that could not have failed to excite 
emotions of awe and delight in the soul of any one 
who looked upon it, especially if he was a Jew. 
‘*Teacher,’’ said his companion, as hundreds of thou- 
sands of others had said, ‘‘behold what manner of 
stones and what manner of buildings!’’ 

The mind of the dispossessed enthusiast was not 
open to the emotions of admiration which moved the 
souls of his companions. He was filled instead with 


the vision of disaster and cataclysm which had 
[191] 


192 JESUS THE Man 


come to him as he had looked out over the doomed 
city. Fully realizing now the unavoidableness of 
the distress which must come to this city before the 
Kingdom of God could descend upon men, he thought 
of it not in terms of wonder at its present greatness, 
but in pity for the distress that was to come upon it. 
‘‘Seest thou these great buildings?*‘ he said; ‘‘there 
shall not be left here one stone upon another which 
shall not be thrown down.’” 

Forecast of destruction of evil men and things 
out of the approaching Kingdom of God was not new 
to the Twelve. Such forecasts, however, had not 
heretofore included the idea of the destruction of 
Jerusalem and the temple, which in the current Mes- 
sianic idea were to become the central point of the 
world. Standing there in direct sight of that tre- 
mendous pile and of that wonderful city, this answer 
seemed contradictory both to facts and theory, and 
aroused a great surprise and curiosity. The temple 
was immense, solid, tremendously substantial. The 
announcement of its coming destruction was hard to 
believe. A desire arose in them to hear this fore- 
cast made more specific. 

The little crowd proceeded on down the steep hill- 
side, across the Brook Kidron, up around the south- 
ern shoulder of the Mount of Olives along the road 
by which only two days before they had entered the 
city in the midst of the shouting multitude. As they 
passed around the brow of the hill, Jesus stopped to 


‘Mark 13:1, 2; Matthew 24:1, 2; Luke 21:5, 6. 


WHEN SHatu THESE THincs Bre? 193 


rest, and looked back over the city he was leaving. 
As he sat there on the hillside, overlooking the tem- 
ple, the four followers who had been most intimate 
with him during the past months came private- 
ly to him to ask him more particularly about the 
startling statement which he had made as they left 
the temple. ‘‘T'ell us, when shall these things be, 
and what shall be the sign when these things are 
about to be accomplished ?’’ 

In reply to this question he began a_ discourse 
which was to dominate the thought and the expecta- 
tion of the millions who were to become his fol- 
lowers in the next few decades, and which even to- 
day, almost two thousand years later, fills the minds 
of a great number of earnest people.’ 

T'o these his intimates, he revealed in detail his 
conception of the cataclysm which he now believed 
was to come upon the world with the approaching 
change of the age. Now that the hope that the na- 
tion would peacefully turn to its God was completely 
destroyed, his mind reverted to the other conception 
of this terrible event; the conception which no doubt 
was held and preached by John the Baptizer, and 
which both he and John had drawn from the pro- 
phetic books of Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Zecha- 
riah, together with the book of the vision of Enoch. 
These things he had read and meditated upon until 
they had acquired definiteness and precision in his 


*Mark 13:3-37; Matthew 24:3-25:46; Luke 21:7-36. 


194 JESUS THE Man 


mind, and a certainty almost, if not quite, sufficient 
to dominate the actual facts of his existence. 

Of all the recorded discourses of Jesus, this one 
is the most difficult in which to be certain concern- 
ing the language actually delivered. Of the books 
written about Jesus which constituted the basis of 
the life and thought of the early Christians, the rec- 
ords of this discourse had the greatest fascination 
for them, for upon it was based their hope for the 
immediate return of Jesus, bringing to the faithful 
the rewards of their fidelity. 

More than any other part of his recorded words 
it influenced and it was influenced by the hopes and 
experience of the early believers, and into it there- 
fore crept more of the unconscious modification and 
interpolation which attempted to adjust his words 
to the circumstances in which they found themselves. 
Some expressions in it are certainly not the words of 
Jesus himself; others probably are not; but out of 
it it is easily possible to gather in fairly clear and 
distinct outline his conception of the destiny of the 
world and particularly of Jerusalem. 

His exact idea cannot be better expressed than in 
the vigorous, picturesque words in which Matthew 
has reported it: 

“And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples 
came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these 
things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and 
of the end of the age? And Jesus answered and said 
unto them, Take heed that no man lead you astray. For 


many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ; 
and shall lead many astray. 


WHEN SHatu Turse Tunes Bz? 195 


“And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see 
that ye be not troubled: for these things must come to 
pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise 
against nation and kingdom against kingdom; and there 
shall be famines and earthquakes, in divers places. But 
all of these are the beginning of travail. Then shall 
they deliver you up unto tribulation and shall kill you 
and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. 
And then many shall stumble, and shall deliver up 
one another, and shall hate one another. And many 
false prophets shall rise, and shall lead many astray. 
And because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of 
many shall wax cold. But he that endureth to the end, 
the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the king- 
dom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony 
unto all the nations; and then shall the end come. 

“When therefore ye shall see the abomination of deso- 
lation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the 
holy place, (let him that readeth understand) then let 
them that are in Judea flee unto the mountains: let him 
that is on the house top not go down to take out the 
things that are in his house: and let him that is in the 
field not return back to take his cloak. 

“But woe unto them that are with child, and to them 
that give suck in those days! And pray ye that your 
flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath. For 
then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since 
the beginning of the world until now, no, nor ever shall 
be. And except those days had been shortened, no flesh 
would have been saved: but for the elect’s sake those 
days shall be shortened. 

“Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is the 
Christ, or Here; believe it not. For there shall arise false 
Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs 
and wonders; so as to lead astray, if possible, even the 
elect. Behold, I have told you beforehand. If therefore 
they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the wilderness ;— 
go not forth: Behold, he is in the inner chambers ;—be- 
lieve it not. For as the lightning cometh from the east, 
and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming 


196 JESUS THE Man 


of the Son of Man. Wheresoever the carcass is, there 
will the eagles be gathered together. 

“But immediately after the tribulation of those days, the 
sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her 
light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers 
of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear 
the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall the 
tribes of the earth mourn and they shall see the Son of 
Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and 
great glory. And he shall send forth his angels with a 
great sound of trumpet, dnd they shall gather together his 
elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the 
other. 

“Now from the fig tree learn her parable; when her 
branch is now become tender, and putteth forth its leaves, 
ye know that the summer is nigh. Even so ye also, when 
ye see all these things, know ye that he is nigh, even at 
the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall 
not pass away till all these things be accompished. 
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall 
not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no one, 
not even the angels of heaven, neither the son, but the 
Father only. And as were the days of Noah, so snall be 
the coming of the Son of Man. For as in thosé days 
which were before the flood they were eating and drink- 
ing, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that 
Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not until the 
flood came, and took them away; so shall be the coming 
of the Son of Man. Then shall two men be in the field; 
one is taken and one is left; two women shall be grinding 
at the mill; one shall be taken, and one is left. 


“Watch therefore, for ye know not on what day your 
Lord cometh. But know this, that if the master of the house 
had known in what watch the thief was coming, he would 
have watched, and would not have suffered his house 
to be broken through. Therefore be ye also ready: for in 
an hour that ye think not the Son of Man cometh. 


“But when the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and 
all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of 


WHEN SHALL THESE THINGS BE? 197 


his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the na- 
tions; and he shall separate them one from the other, as 
the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: and 
he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on 
the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right 
hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom 
prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I 
was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and 
ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 
naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: 
I was in prison and ye came unto me, 

“Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, 
when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee, or athirst, 
and gave thee drink, and when saw we thee a stranger, 
and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? And 
when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 

“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily 
I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these 
my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me. 

“Then, shall he say also unto them on the left hand, 
Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire, which is 
prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was an hun- 
gered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye 
gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not 
in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, 
and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer, say- 
ing, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a 
stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not min- 
ister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, 
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one 
of the least of these, ye did it not unto me. And these 
shall go away into eternal punishment; but the righteous 
into eternal life.” 

We may venture to skeletonize this conception, as 
follows: 

1. There shall be many attempts upon the part 
of false Christs. 


2. There shall be wars and rumors of wars. 


198 JESUS THE Man 


3. There shall be famines and earthquakes. 

4. There shall be false prophets. 

5. The gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached 
in the whole world. 

6. The abomination of desolation shall be seen 
standing in the holy place. 

7. There shall be great tribulation such as has 
never been and never shall be again. 

8. The sun and moon shall be darkened and 
stars shall fall to the ground and the powers of 
heaven shall be shaken. 

9. Then shall the tribes of the earth mourn. 

10. Then shall the Son of Man come upon the 
clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 

11. He shall send forth his angels and gather to- 
cether the elect. 

12. Then the Son of Man shall sit on the throne 
of his glory and all the nations shall be gathered be- 
fore him. 

13. He shall separate the good from the bad. 

14. The bad shall go away into eternal punish- 
ment but the righteous into eternal life. 

This conception was in general that of all Mes- 
sianists of his time who were familiar with the Mes- 
Sianic writing and prophecies. In one respect how- 
ever, it was immensely different. We can see in his 
statement that ‘‘The gospel of the Kingdom shall 
be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto 
all the nations,’’ the idea that the coming Kingdom 
held promise for all the rest of the world as well as 
for the Jews. At the beginning of his preaching, the 


WHEN SHALL THESE THINGS BE? 199 


message had seemed to him to come only to the 
House of Israel. Beginning perhaps with the realiz- 
ation ot the opposition of the leaders of his own race, 
he had finally arrived at the belief that he hurled in 
the teeth of the chief priests and the Pharisees when 
he realized finally that they had rejected him and his 
gospel of the Kingdom: ‘* The Kingdom of God shall 
be taken away from you and shall be given to a na- 
tion bringing forth the fruits thereof.’’ Heretofore it 
had been enough that the gospel should be preached 
to the sons of Abraham; but now it had at last be- 
come evident that it must also be preached to all the 
nations of the earth. His conflict with the leaders 
of his people had led his great soul to break the con- 
fines of a narrow nationalism and to make his King- 
dom of God a kingdom broad enough to include the 
righteous of all the world,—all those who would 
bring forth the fruits thereof. 

He must himself have been most profoundly af- 
fected by this recital of his great conception. In 
the light of these coming stupendous events, his an- 
ger and disappointment must have been driven away 
by emotions far deeper and more permanent. Es- 
pecially must he have been affected by one phase of 
this conception, which becomes most significant in 
the light of the attitude which he maintained towards 
the experiences which he subsequently underwent. 

All the early part of his program as announced 
in this discourse contemplated his absence. He was 
not to be present; there was to be opportunity for 
false Christs to arise and deceive his own people. 


200 JESUS THE Man 


His disciples were to be disposed to look for him 
in many places, in none of which he would be. Then 
finally he was to come to them upon the clouds of 
heaven and perform his great function as the An- 
ointed of God, to be the judge of the world. 

The question as to how this was to come to pass 
he had no doubt solved before. He was then present 
in the world. Before this could come to pass he must 
go out of the world and assume a position which 
would permit him to come upon the clouds of 
heaven; that is, he must ascend into heaven. How 
‘else could this come to be than that he should die, 
be raised from the dead, and exalted into heaven? 
The mere recital of such a discourse as this must 
have caused him to realize how futile had been his 
hope that these things could come to pass peaceably 
and quietly by the submission of the Jewish na- 
tion to him and to his message. 

At any rate, from this time on he was dominated 
by the confident belief that his death was at hand, 
and that it was a necessary part of the plan for 
bringing in the Kingdom. He seems to have had in 
his mind no resistance to this consummation. 

Leaving the western slope of the mountain, he 
passed on to the village of Bethany. It must now 
have been evident to all his followers that the at- 
tempt to dominate the nation had failed and that 
the hope for the immediate appearance of the King- 
dom was at an end. We hear no more of the Gal. 
ilean multitude surrounding him, but his little in. 
ner circle of devoted followers still were faithful. 


WHEN SHALL THESE THINGS BE? 201 


During the next day he remained in quiet seclu- 
sion in Bethany. 

His opponents in the city were far from quiet 
however. Rendered more determined than ever by 
his bold avowal that they were to be excluded from 
the Kingdom, and by the magnificent denunciation 
delivered before the multitude with which he had 
abandoned the scene of his triumph, the Jewish 
rulers met in the house of Caiaphas, the high priest, 
and planned for means to seize him and put an end 
to the disturbance which his presence had created. 
They were still handicapped, however, by the pres- 
ence of the multitude of his followers and of the 
added multitudes which were pouring into the city 
for the ceremonies of the Passover, large numbers 
of whom were Messianists and could easily be drawn 
into the maelstrom of a Messianic outbreak. They 
decided that they must wait until after the feast 
was over and these multitudes had scattered back 
to their homes, lest they create in this voleanically 
emotional crowd a tumult they would be unable to 
control.’ 


®Matthew 26:3-5; Mark 14:1 2; Luke 22:1, 2. 


CHAPTER XVL. 


Tar Supper At BETHANY AND THE BETRAYAL 


During the day Jesus was practically in hiding. 
It is reasonable to suppose that his followers, scatter- 
ed throughout the city, and without the coordinating 
influence of the presence of their leader, became dis- 
organized and discouraged. It was now evident that 
the dream was past. Jesus had had his great vppor- 
tunity and at one moment had seemed within touch- 
ing distance of the goal they were all seeking. But 
now that he was to all intents excluded from the 
temple, when it was evident that the authorities 
were in full control both of the temple and the city 
and had definite designs upon his life, it must have 
been obvious even to the most devoted enthusiast 
that the hopes with which they had come to Jeru- 
salem had become impossible of fulfillment. The 
mass of his followers may have been absorbed 
into the crowds coming to participate in the Pass- 
over. To a great number of them, however, the 
complete destruction of their hopes must have prov- 
ed to be a source of severe difficulty. 

This crowd which had followed Jesus was no or- 
dinary Passover crowd. They had come to the city 
with a definite purpose and a definite expectation. 
They were sure that immediately after they arrived 


at Jerusalem the Kingdom of God was going to ap- 
[202] 


THE SUPPER AT BETHANY 203 


pear. In view of the character of the hope with 
which they were obsessed, they would not have at- 
tempted to make adequate preparation for an ex- 
tended stay in the city. The immediate passing away 
of the world in which they then lived, which they con- 
fidently expected, made such a preparation unnec- 
essary and the attitude of mind which caused them 
to join themselves to this great procession would 
naturally have prevented them from making such 
preparation. 

The complete failure of this program placed this 
array of the poor and the distressed of Galilee, 
stranded in a great city, face to face with a very 
serious economic problem. Great numbers of them 
must have been needy in the extreme when they left 
their homes in Galilee to undertake this trip. They 
had now been away from their homes not less than 
eight days. The problem of mere existence must 
all at once have become to numbers of them imme- 
diate and insistent. 

On that Wednesday night Jesus and the Twelve, 
together with some others, partook of the evening 
meal in the home of those two women of Beth- 
any. It was asad event. Every one present knew 
definitely of the failure of their great hopes and of 
the uncertainty which now confronted their beloved 


1Luke 19:11, 


*Mark 14:3-11; Matthew 26:6-16; Luke 7:36-50. The story 
as told by Luke varies materially from that given by Matthew 
and Mark, but is evidently the same. Luke, as in so many in- 
stances, has not hesitated to modify Mark’s record, and has as. 


204 JESUS THE MAN 


leader and themselves. By this time he had be- 
come completely adjusted to the changed condi- 
tions, and had determined to stay in Jerusalem and 
undergo the humiliation, distress, and death which 
he now realized he must undergo in order to fulfill 
completely the prophecies concerning the Messiah. 
No longer did he speak or think of leaving the city; 
he was determined to stay and complete his destiny 
down to the last moment of humiliation and suf- 
fering. 

The faithful few who still clung about him must 
also have realized to some extent the danger which 
he faced. The possibilities of the situation they 
had seen in the attitude of the authorities the pre- 
vious day in the temple and by this time they 
were fully acquainted with the iron determination 
which animated Jesus, and prevented him from de- 
parting to avoid those possibilities. 

Oppressed with this realization, as they reclined 
at table one of his women followers, perhaps Mary 
herself, one of his hostesses who was so tenderly at- 
tached to him, came behind him with a vessel of 
precious, fragrant ointment, and with tears of sor- 
row began to anoint those beloved feet and to wipe 
them with her hair. This act, strange to us western- 
ers, but perfectly natural under the customs and 


sembled with it material which had no connection with the main 
story. The essential elements are identical in all three of the 
stories, and in some respects the variants are supplementary. 
Simon the host, and the woman haying an alabaster cruse of pre- 
cious ointment which she poured upon the person of Jesus, are the 
essential factors and are identical. 


THE SuPPER AT BETHANY 205 


conditions which prevailed at that time and place, 
revealed not merely her love for him, but the 
great sorrow which filled her heart as she realized 
dimly but surely the trouble and suffering which 
lay ahead of him. 

It was a gracious and affectionate act and the 
spirit which actuated it no less than the fragrance 
of the nard itself must have filled all the room and 
the already crowded hearts of those who reclined 
about their defeated leader. But in one of them at 
least it struck a discordant note and thereby hur- 
ried the disaster which they all anticipated. 

Judas, a native of Kerioth (the word Iscariot is 
the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ‘‘Ish 
Kerwoth,’’ man of Kerioth) was apparently recover- 
ing from the wild hope and belief which had led him 
thus far and was beginning to look at things with 
a more rational mind. Apparently he was more 
practical than the others; one account makes him 
the treasurer of the little band composed of Jesus 
and the Twelve and the women, which would indi- 
cate that he was more accustomed to commercial and 
financial transactions than the others. A perfectly 
reasonable inference would lead to the conclusion 
that he was more practical by nature and conse- 
quently, although like them swept off his feet by the 
powerful belief in the coming of the Messianic king- 
dom in which they had all been brought up from their 
earliest childhood, nevertheless more prompt to re- 
cover from the domination of an unbased hope and 
even from that of a powerful personality. As he was 


206 JESUS THE MANn 


more materialistic in his make-up, his expectations 
relative to the Kingdom were more material than 
those of the other disciples, and his disappointment 
at the nonfulfillment relatively greater. He was be- 
ginning to think that this entire procedure of theirs 
had been merely an unsubstantial hope, practically 
impossible of consummation; and that Jesus, sincere 
as he was, overwhelmingly powerful personality 
though he be, was mistaken in his expectation and 
had led his multitudes to expect what could not oc- 
eur. No doubt, too, his practical mind must have 
been disturbed by the distress in which he saw num- 
‘bers of the people who had so joyously followed 
them down to Jerusalem only to meet with this tre- 
mendous disappointment. 

In the face of these facts, this expensive and use- 
less tribute to one who he thought had not only fail- 
ed but had led them into this distressing predica- 
ment, grated intensely upon him. In the face of the 
need with which they were surrounded, why this use- 
less waste? Something must be done. Instead of wast- 
ing time and money in further useless adulation, it 
was time to do something practical to help these 
poor people to get back to their homes. ‘‘Why was 
not this ointment sold,’’ he asked, ‘‘and the money 
given to these poor?’” 

The question was heard by Jesus and brought 


*John (12:4-8) definitely identifies the complainer with Judas, 
but probably as a conclusion drawn from the synoptic gospels,— 
a conclusion naturally to be drawn by anyone who reads them 
closely and observes the immediate connection of the going away 


THE SUPPER AT BETHANY 207 


from him a sbarp rebuke to the too practical Judas. 
He understood the sorrow and apprehension which 
swelled the heart of this woman and knew in his 
own soul how thoroughly it was justified by the 
facts. Judas’ failure to share her feeling or to sym- 
pathize with the sadness which filled his leader, 
aroused in Jesus a momentary irritation. He spoke 
sharply to his unsympathetic follower. ‘*Why 
trouble ye the woman?’’ he said, ‘‘for she hath 
wrought a good work upon me. For the poor ye 
have always with you, and whensoever ye will ye 
can do them good, but me ye have not always. She 
hath done what she could; she hath anointed my 
body beforehand for the burying, and I say unto 
you that wheresoever the gospel shall be preached 
throughout the whole world, that also which this 
woman hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial 
of her.’’ 

This rebuke and the apparent absence of prac- 
tical Judgment upon the part of the man whom he 
had now come to recognize as only a man, broke the 
last shred of loyalty which bound the man of Ker- 
ioth to Jesus. Perhaps he came to think that the 
continued activity of this man, obsessed as he was 
with a sense of his own greatness and with a hope 
incapable of fulfillment, with his tremendous pow- 
er to communicate the same exalted hopes to others 
and to lead them into the most impossible situations, 
of Judas with the rebuke of Jesus. Matthew and Mark, how- 
ever, indicate that there were others who participated in the 


feeling of Judas, even though they did not take the rebuke of 
Jesus to heart as he did. 


208 JESUS THE Maw 


constituted a threat of possibilities which should not 
be hazarded. Perhaps he believed that with Jesus 
still active, these multitudes could not be prevented 
from following him into situations promising even 
more serious distress, while if he were deprived of 
the power to lead them, they might return to their 
senses and leave Jerusalem for their homes. Per- 
haps the anger at this outspoken rebuke in the pres- 
ence of numbers broke a self-control which was al- 
ready seriously strained by the trying circumstances 
and the disappointment through which they were 
passing, and sent him in indignation to seek revenge 
for the affront thus thrust upon him. 

But whatever the reason, after this rebuke Judas 
rose from the table and went across Olivet into the 
city, sought the chief priests whom he knew to be 
seeking for Jesus to take him, and told them that 
he would find an opportunity to deliver Jesus to 
them quietly, apart from the multitude, where a tu- 
mult could be avoided. 

This proposal was exactly what the Jewish au- 
thorities desired. The only thing which hitherto 
had prevented them from arresting him had been 
the impossibility of accomplishing precisely what 
Judas now proposed to do for them. Wherever 
they had met Jesus, he had been surrounded by the 
multitude of his followers. Evidently they were 
unaware of his abode in Bethany. They had decid- 
ed that their only possible method was to wait until 
the crowds were gone and even this carried with it 
the possibility that Jesus himself might go with the 


THe BeETRAYAL 209 


crowds and thus defeat them completely. Here was 
an opportunity to accomplish their purpose immed- 
iately and conveniently, so they were glad to give 
Judas money for the information which he prom- 
ised to bring.’ 

Judas’ absence must have been noticed. From 
Bethany to Jerusalem and return required consid- 
erable time. Also, unless Judas was very greatly 
gifted in concealing personal feelings, the deep 
emotions and the change of attitude towards Jesus 
which drove him out into the night on a mission of 
this kind must have revealed themselves in his coun- 
tenance. Jesus must have observed it and have 
realized the meaning of this absence. 

The time of the Passover was approaching. It 
was a solemn time for all Jews and its celebration 
was a ceremony in which all who were at Jerusalem 
always participated: This great ritualistic meal, the 
greatest of all the Jewish celebrations, was a meal 
prepared and served under very rigid rules, cele- 
brating the emancipation of the Jews from their 
Egyptian bondage and the especial care of God for 
them under greatest danger. Whatever the circum- 
stances surrounding them, it did not occur to the 
Twelve that they would not participate in this great 
racial feast, so the next day they made inquiry of 
Jesus concerning the arrangements he desired to be 
made for participation in this ceremony. It was al- 


‘Luke 22:3-6. 
5Mark 14:12-17; Matthew 26:17-20; Luke 22:7-13. 


210 | Jesus THE Man 


ways a group ceremony, participated in by the fam- 
ily, or by a group of close friends. 

Jesus sent them to the home of one of his follow- 
ers in the city, who, he was assured, would provide 
for them the facilities which they lacked. Follow- 
ing his instructions, they went away, found the place 
and made the preparations. They found an upper 
chamber, large and commodious, probably the home 
of the mother of John Mark, then a very young man, 
who afterwards became the biographer of the man 
who now suddenly entered his home and his life. In 
the preparations of the day, Judas, as the financier 
of the little band, fully participated, for the success 
of his undertaking required that nothing be done to 
arouse the suspicion of his associates. 

Jesus again remained in seclusion during Thurs- 
day, but with the arrival of the night, which made it 
safe for him again to enter into the streets of the 
capital, he came with the Twelve into the city to the 
upper room which had been prepared, and sat down 
to an evening meal. Much has been written about 
this meal in the attempt to determine whether or not 
it was the regular Passover meal. Apparently it 
was not, but was merely an evening meal eaten by 
them together in the room which had been prepared 
for their occupancy during the entire period of the 
Passover.° 


‘The Passover proper was not eaten until the next evening, 
after the death of Jesus. The meal itself as reported does not 
show the required characteristics of the Paschal meal. See Ex. 
12 :3-14. 


Tue BETRAYAL PATI 


Fully conscious as he now was of the certainty and 
the nearness of his approaching death, this assem- 
bly about the table with his faithful friends must 
have been tremendously impressive to Jesus, and his 
seriousness was reflected through him to his disci- 
ples. They had not yet completely realized the cer- 
tainty of the approaching catastrophe, but in him 
was no doubt. He had realized the meaning of the 
departure of Judas the evening before, and an eye 
sharpened by apprehension could not have failed to 
divine from Judas’ acts during the day and at this 
meal itself, the extent to which he had accomplished 
his purpose. As the time passed, this conviction 
grew into certainty and he announced to the gather- 
ed Twelve that one of those gathered there with him, 
even one who dipped with him in the dish, would be- 
tray him.’ His companions, already depressed and 
sorrowful, with their confidence even in themselves 
disturbed by the events of the past few days, began 
to inquire of him sadly—Lord, is it 1? It was a nat- 
ural inquiry, but Jesus did not identify the man who 
was thus to injure them all so deeply. Instead he 
merely repeated his statement, ‘‘It is one of the 
Twelve, one who dippeth with me in the dish, one who 
is eating this meal with me.’’ Had he been explicit 
in his reply and pointed out the man who was to do 
this deed, it is probable that it would never have 
taken place. The temperament which caused those 


TMark 14:18-21; Matthew 26:21-24; Luke 22:21-23. The sug- 
gestion in Matthew 26:25 that Jesus revealed to Judas himself 
his knowledge of his perfidy is not contradictory of Mark 14:19. 


212 JESUS THE Man 


two sons of Zebedee to be called sons of thunder, and 
which tempted them to call down lightning from the 
heavens to destroy the Samaritans who declined to 
let them pass through their village, would probably 
have made that contemplated betrayal an impossi- 
bility. 

The disciples all reassured him of their lasting fi- 
delity, but his keener realization of the situation in 
which they were placed and the impossibility of their 
making their protestations good left him undeceived. 
He knew that he must pass through his trial alone. 
To the insistence of Peter he merely said, ‘‘This 
very night you will deny me.’’ 

Still secure in his secrecy, Judas presently rose 
up again to leave, this time to complete the work he 
had planned the day before. He did not leave, how- 
ever, until he was assured that Jesus with the few 
most intimate of the Twelve would presently leave in 
their turn to go to a place previously visited by them 
on the side of Olivet. 

There was no doubt in Jesus’ mind as to the mean- 
ing of this departure. The consciousness that the 
great crisis of his life was at hand pressed down 
upon him with overwhelming force, 

Confronted with the terrible fact, for a moment 
even his powerful purpose wavered. The multitude 
of his followers were still in Jerusalem. He had 
about him a faithful few. Was it not possible per- 
haps to reassemble his followers, to meet force with 
force and overcome it? Recalling to his disciples 


THe BETRAYAL pA bs 


the day upon which he had given them a command 
and sent them forth and the success which attended 
them, he said—‘‘When I sent you forth without 
purse and wallet and shoes, lacked ye anything?’” 
Remembering the glorious days of achievement and 
success, they said ‘‘Nothing.’’ ‘‘But now,’’ he said, 
‘*T bid you otherwise; he that hath a purse, let him 
take it, likewise a wallet, and he that hath neither 
purse nor wallet, let him sell his cloak and buy a 
sword. For I say to you that this which was written 
must be fulfilled in me: He was reckoned with trans- 
gressors ; and that which concerns me hath an end.”’ 

The disciples did not respond instantly to this new 
and strange attitude. They probably did not fully 
comprehend the meaning and purpose of what he 
said but a hurried inventory discovered that among 
them were already two swords which they showed 
to him. 

But the wavering was only momentary. He had 
already recognized the futility of that course. ‘‘It 
is enough’’ he said. His disciples were scattered 
and unwarlike; beside, his original purpose reassert- 
ed itself. He must submit to the inevitable. 

It was time to depart, but before they rose from 
the table, realizing the certainty and immediateness 
of the coming separation, he took bread and broke 


Luke 22 :34-38. 

"This quotation from Isaiah 53 (v. 12) indicates that this 
great chapter from the greatest of the Hebrew prophets was al- 
ready deeply seated in his mind as the true answer to his problem. 
It is the key to his actions for the few remaining hours of his 
life. . 


214 JESUS THE Man 


it and gave to his companions and likewise wine, 
saying to them—‘‘I shall no more drink of the fruit 
of the vine until that day when I shall drink it new 
with you in the Kingdom of God.’ He was about 
to enter into his death as into the door of the coming 
Kingdom. 

Across the quiet city, over the bridge which joined 
the city with the temple hill, over the two deep val- 
leys and the intervening temple hill, followed by the 
faithful eleven, and perhaps by others, almost cer- 
tainly by the young Mark, he went to the garden of 
the wine press, on the slope of the Mount of Olives. 


Matthew, 26 :26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:17-20. Compare 
note 14 to Chapter IX. It is entirely reasonable to admit the 
possibility that among a group to whom the passover had the 
great place it held with all Jews, the confidence in their partici- 
pation in a new kingdom in another world would express itself 
in a spontaneously developed ritualistic meal, symbolical of the 
repasts of which they should partake together in the coming King- 
dom, which had continued among them from time to time for 
months before. To this possibility Matthew 26:29 adds enough 
to make it a probability. After Jesus’ death and the reflection 
of his disciples upon it, especially after the development of the 
atonement theory of Paul, all of which had occurred before the 
earliest of our gospels was written, it was hardly possible to pre- 
vent the entry of the factors which changed the significance of 
the ritual. 


“Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26; Luke 22:39. 


CHAPTER XVIL. 


Tuer ARREST AND THE INQUISITION. 


Leaving all but three at the entrance, he took 
Peter, James, and John and went further into the 
garden, to gather his courage and confirm his de- 
termination for the ordeal which he knew was now 
near at hand.” The three companions, wearied with 
the strain of the past few days and with the lateness 
of the hour, speedily fell asleep, but Jesus himself 
remained alone in prayer and in wrestling with his 
own soul. Confronted with the immediate realiza- 
tion of the death for which he had long been pre- 
pared in purpose, even his tremendous will was not 
sufficient to prevent the physical revulsion against 
dissolttion. Even his absolute confidence in the glory 
that lay beyond the grave could not prevent his 
shrinking from the experience which the whole phys- 
ical nature of man is organized to avoid. He realized 
the necessity of his death and the tremendous conse- 
quences, not merely to himself, but to the whole 
world, which should follow upon it; nevertheless he 
prayed: ‘‘ Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass 
away from me.’’ But through all the terrible ex- 
perience, alone in the silence and darkness, he 
was able to maintain his great purpose unshaken. 


Mark 14:32-36; Matthew 26:36-39; Luke 22 :39-42. 
(215] 


216 JESUS THE Man 


If 1t was in truth the will of God, he was submissive 
to it. ‘*Not as I will, but as thou wilt, O my Father ; 
if this cup cannot pass away except I drink it, thy 
will be done.”’ 

Meanwhile Judas had been prompt in carrying out 
his plan. The chief priests had immediately placed 
under his guidance a force sufficient to make sure 
of arresting the disturber. Accompanied by the po- 
lice foree left to the’ nation, the officers of the 
eity and the temple guards, armed with swords and 
clubs, he was on the way across the valley of the 
Kidron. He carried with him the total authority of 
the nation, as represented by the orders of the chief 
priests and the elders of the people, in other words, 
of the Great Council.” They had no right to expect 
a large number to be with Jesus at this time, or any 
armed resistance whatever, nevertheless they took 
no risk and brought a large number to make certain 
of success. Even as Jesus was waking his sleeping 
companions this multitude of officers appeared in 
the garden, led directly to the spot by Judas. 

Judas came in advanee, the crowd of officers, how- 
ever, following close behind. The plan contemplat- 
ed the arrest of Jesus alone; evidently the Twelve 
had not been sufficiently prominent in the proceed- 
ings in the temple to arouse any special interest in 
them. The Jerusalem authorities were making the 
same mistake that Herod had made in the case of 
John the Baptizer; they assumed that if they arrest- 


*Mark 14 :48-52; Matthew 26 :47-56; Luke 22 :47-53; John 18 :1-11. 


THE ARREST AND THE INQUISITION Ay 


ed the leader, the crowd of enthusiasts would drift 
away and the whole incident be speedily forgotten. 
Just as in arresting John they left Jesus, so in ar- 
resting Jesus, they overlooked the men who took 
up his movement after him and led it into immense- 
ly greater proportions than anything that he per- 
sonally developed. What would have occurred had 
they decided to take the Twelve also, what the future 
history of the world might have been, we cannot 
hazard a guess; certainly it would have been tre- 
mendously different. 

Judas expected to find him surrounded by a small 
band of his followers, and to avoid the arrest of the 
wrong person in the indistinctness of the night, he 
had agreed with the officers upon a signal which 
should identify the man they were to take. The 
noise and the lights and the confusion of the crowd 
had by this time thoroughly aroused the little group. 
Unable to find them immediately, the officers pro- 
ceeded to search the grounds. Concealment, if in- 
deed intended, became impossible. As they ap- 
proached the secluded place where Jesus and his 
three companions were, Jesus asked them ‘‘ Whom 
seek ye?’’ ‘‘ Jesus of Nazareth,’’ they replied. 

Jesus knew that his time was come. His hour of 
depression and shrinking from his destiny was 
past. Confronted with the fact, his soul rose to 
the occasion. Stepping from the darkness out into 
the flickering hight of the torches and lanterns, he 
said: ‘‘I am he.’’ The majesty of the personal ap- 
pearance of the man who suddenly presented him- 


218 JESUS THE Man 


self before them profoundly affected even that body 
of experienced officers. No doubt they were influ- 
enced in some degree by the stories of his super- 
natural powers which by this time must have been 
thoroughly circulated through the city, and at this 
unexpected appearance, they shrank back together 
as though confronted with a sudden danger. But 
Judas, now thoroughly disabused of his former be- 
lief in the supernatural character of Jesus, was not 
affected by the familiar sight. Going forward he 
saluted his betrayed leader in the eastern manner, 
with a kiss, the agreed signal of identification. 
‘* Judas,’’ said Jesus, as he looked upon the man who 
had been his intimate companion and daily associate 
for months, who had shared with him his exalted 
hopes, who had accompanied him in his wanderings 
to escape arrest and who was now turning him over 
to his bitter enemies to be destroyed, ‘‘betrayest 
thou the Son of Man with a kiss?”’ 

If the question indicated uncertainty as to the 
meaning of this greeting, or as it is more commonly 
interpreted, a rebuke to Judas for using a greeting 
of affection as a means of betrayal, the response 
upon the part of his three companions who now saw 
the meaning of this proceeding, was very different. 
One of those two swords which the twelve had found 
in their possession in that upper chamber in the 
city, was in the hands of Simon Peter. Perhaps he 
remembered that remark of Jesus in the upper cham- 
ber an hour or two ago. ‘‘Lord,’’ he eried, ‘‘shall 
we smite with the sword?’’ Drawing the sword, he 


Tue ARREST AND THE INQUISITION 219 


struck at one of the officers, a member of the house- 
hold of the High Priest, and cut off an ear. No doubt 
a seramble ensued as the officers laid hands upon 
Jesus and perhaps engaged momentarily in combat 
with his belligerent follower, but Jesus stopped what 
was too evidently an unequal struggle. ‘“‘Put up 
your sword,’’ he said to Peter; ‘‘for all those who 
take up the sword shall perish by the sword.’’ He 
recognized clearly that if his followers attempted 
to meet violence with violence it could mean nothing 
but destruction for them. Beside, such violence was 
entirely unnecessary. He was the Son of God; if it 
were not God’s will that he should undergo this ex- 
perience and fulfill the scriptures, God himself 
would intervene without the help of men. ‘‘Think- 
est thou,’’ he said to Peter, ‘‘that I cannot beseech 
my Father and he shall even now send me more than 
twelve legions of angels? but how then should the 
scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?’’ 

Turning to the crowd of officers who surrounded 
him, he said ‘‘ Are ye come out as against a robber 
with sword and staves to seize me? I sat daily in 
the temple teaching, and ye took me not. But all this 
is come to pass that the scriptures of the prophets 
might be fulfilled.’’ It was apparent to his follow- 
ers that resistance was useless. The danger was 
manifest; each took counsel for his own safety and 
all fled into the darkness. 

His captors according to instructions led Jesus to 
the house of Joseph Caiaphas, who was at that time 
the High Priest, where a great number, perhaps a 


220 JESUS THE MANn 


majority of the leading men of the nation and its 
ereat council, had gathered, awaiting the return of 
the arresting party, to examine this Galilean dis- 
turber when he should be brought.’ 

Such a preliminary examination was very neces- 
sary for their purposes. They were determined up- 
on the destruction of this man, but so far they had 
no ground upon which to bring a charge against him 
according to either their law or the Roman law, 
which would justify putting him to death. So they 
brought Jesus into the room where this assembly of 
the great of the Jewish nation were gathered, and 
proceeded to interrogate him, and to examine such 
witnesses as could be procured to support an accu- 
sation against him. 

They asked Jesus first concerning the meaning of 
his movement; that is, of his disciples and of his 
teaching. This information he refused to give. To 
the inquiry he responded, ‘‘I have spoken openly to 
the world; I always taught in the synagogues and in 
the temple where all Israel comes together. I have 
not spoken in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask 
those who have heard me what I said to them; they 
all know what I said.’’ In the room, conducting this 
examination, were a number of men who had listened 
to him and had disputed with him in the temple, and 
whom he recognized. Probably the larger portion of 
the company about him were present on that fateful 
Tuesday, two days ago, when they had upset his 


°Mark 14:53, 55-64; Matthew 26:57, 59-66. 


THE ARREST AND THE INQUISITION DOT 


plans to make the temple the center about which 
should gather the new Kingdom of God, and had 
listened to his terrible denunciation of them when 
he left the temple that night. His remarks were not 
merely an expression of unwillingness to speak; the 
futility of a statement made by him under such cir- 
cumstances was apparent. 

But the information which these men had concern- 
ing him, while sufficient to arouse their deadly an- 
tagonism, was not sufficient to support a verdict of 
death, and such a verdict was what they desired to 
secure. This was not an official meeting of the 
court; it was merely a search for evidence which 
they could use when the matter was presented to the 
court. So they sought other testimony which might 
make their case against him a capital one. 

This search also was ineffective. They brought 
before them many persons who had seen him and 
heard him in the temple and who told various 
stories of what they had seen and heard there. But 
the statements of these men were contradictory and 
indefinite. Some of them, probably garbling and 
falsely combining statements made by him during 
those two exciting days, claimed that they heard him 
say that he would destroy the temple and replace it 
within three days with another one made without 


‘Identification of this night meeting as a regular session of 
the Sanhedrin, at which sentence was passed, is impossible in the 
face of the plain provisions of the Jewish law governing crim- 
inal proceedings as handed down in the Talmud (Sanhedrin, 
Mishna I, Chapter IV), It is enough at this point to call at- 
tention to the requirement that criminal trials must both begin 


222 JESUS THE Man 


hands. But even on this point, their statements did 
not agree and, even if they had agreed, it would still 
not have been sufficient ground upon which to ask 
for a verdict of death. 

In a new attempt to induce Jesus to give testi- 
mony against himself, or to clarify the statements 
that had been made so that they might be usable 
against him, the High Priest now demanded of Jesus 
what he had to say to the charges. But Jesus re- 
fused to answer. This whole procedure was little 
more than an application of what in modern times 
has been called ‘‘the third degree’’ by these high 
authorities of the Jews to this defenseless man, and 
the lofty determination of Jesus refused to permit 
him to bandy words with them. Beside, he believed 
that he was fulfilling that great prophecy of Isaiah— 
‘‘He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he 
opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the 
slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is 
dumb, so he opened not his mouth.’” The demands 
and end, and must conduct the discussion, in the daytime. A 
night trial was an impossibility under the Jewish criminal law. 
This, however, did not prevent a search for evidence and prep- 
aration for a trial, at night. This is what occurred at the house 
of Caiaphas. It may also be suggested that the Sanhedrin had 
a chamber of its own on the temple mount, where it held its ses- 


sions of all kinds, Such a trial would not have been held in a 
residence. 


‘Isaiah 53:7. His statement to the twelve in the upper cham- 
ber after Judas had gone out, quoting from this great chapter, 
together with his twice repeated statement in Gethsemane rela- 
tive to the necessity of the fulfillment of the prophecies, fully 
justify the conclusion of the text that he was moving in a con- 
sciousness saturated with this prophecy. 


Tue ARREST AND THE INQUISITION as 


that he testify concerning himself were met with un- 
broken silence. 


They were still without a charge which they could 
take before the council and upon it demand his death. 
They had exhausted their material, and at the end 
of the investigation they were still without the de- 
sired means of destroying him. But Caiaphas finally 
found a question which moved him and which gave 
them the desired weapon against him. 

Except in conversations with the twelve subse- 
quent to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus never admitted 
to any one that he was the Christ. This, his great 
secret, he had kept locked in his own breast from the 
time of its conception at the fords of the Jordan, ex- 
cept that time with those most intimate with him, 
and he had even then most earnestly impressed 
upon them the necessity that they too should 
reveal it to no one. To the multitudes he had 
remained a prophet of the Kingdom; perhaps a fore- 
runner of the Messiah, perhaps Elijah, but it had not 
occurred to the crowds to whom he spoke during 
those months that he himself was the Messiah whose 
future coming he was preaching. Even in the tem- 
ple, when he was exchanging hard questions with the 
Pharisees and the lawyers, he made no claims about 
his Messiahship; he merely asked his opponents 
their opinion about the Christ. 

The priests, however, had heard the Messianic 
chants of the crowd which entered the city with him, 


224 JESUS THE Man 


had heard him approve their repetition by the chil- 
dren in the temple, had been nonplussed by his in- 
quiry as to who was the Christ. Probably for some 
such reason, the idea came to the High Priest that 
this man, whose bearing was so majestic and whose 
assumption of authority was so superb, meant by 
the eryptic expressions by which he denominated 
himself, referring to himself as the Son of Man, and 
speaking with supreme assurance of the temple as 
his Father’s house, might entertain even this colos- 
sal conception of his own personality. If this was 
true, and he could be induced to make his claim in 
provable form, the handle they desired presented 
itself to them. Claim of the Messiahship was an anti- 
Roman claim, an assumption of an authority not 
subject to Rome, a practical equivalent of treason 
against Rome which would be expected to effect his 
destruction as soon as he was reported to the Ro- 
man governor. Whatever the source of the idea, 
the High Priest now stood up before Jesus and made 
his last attempt. ‘‘I adjure thee by the living God, 
that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the son 
OL; God? 

There was no means to compel Jesus to answer. 
The same silence which he had maintained up to 
this time would have carried him past this emer- 
gency, and would have left his enemies without 
means to encompass his death. They could have gone 
before their great court perhaps with a charge upon 
which he might have been punished, but his death 


THE ARREST AND THE INQUISITION 225 


would still have been beyond their reach. But this 
appeal, couched in the language used by the High 
Priest, even though it came from the lips of one who 
sought his death, evoked in him a response which 
would not permit silence. To fail to assert his di- 
vine relationship in such a presence and in the face 
of such a demand, would have been unworthy of the 
high conception and was indeed impossible. That he 
knew the danger involved in such a claim is mani- 
fested by the way in which he had concealed it for 
these many months, but even in the face of the death 
which now confronted him, he met the challenge 
boldly—‘‘I am.’’ 

Such an announcement, from a man situated as he 
then was, must have struck that assembly of ration- 
alists as indescribably incongruous and ridiculous. 
No doubt this amazing statement was met with ex- 
pressions of incredulity and contempt. Jesus him- 
self was not insensible of the contradiction between 
his statement and the apparent facts. He too, had 
met it, but had solved it by his conception of the nec- 
essary humiliation, death and resurrection of the 
Messiah. And in the presence of their contemptuous 
unbelief, he proudly reasserted himself. ‘*‘Never- 
theless I say unto you that hereafter ye shall see 
the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Jehovah, 
and coming on the clouds of Heaven.’’ 

This proud and supremely courageous announce- 
ment was worthy of the high conception upon which 
it was based. In his exaltation, he had passed the 


226 JESUS THE MAN 


restraints of his usual speech and claimed this great 
relation to God, using the unspeakable Name. But 
it had given his enemies the hold upon him for which 
they had been seeking. As a sign that blasphemy 
had been committed in his presence, the High Priest 
rent his garment as required by the law, and eried, 
‘*He has spoken blasphemy: what further need have 
we of witnesses? Now that you have heard the blas- 
phemy, what think you?’’ All present agreed that he 


‘Undoubtedly the assertion of Jesus must have included the 
sacred name—Jehovah. Under the Jewish law it was impossible 
to commit blasphemy unless this sacred name was used. The 
claim to be the Messiah was not blasphemy. Talmud, Mishna VI, 
Chapter VII, Sanhedrin: “A blasphemer is not guilty unless he 
mentioned the proper name of God (Jehovah)’.. It was custom- 
ary for all Jews whenever they used the name of God except 
where they were testifying concerning blasphemy and where the 
exact language must be proved, to use some pseudonym, usually 
a word containing the same number of Hebrew letters as Je- 
hovah; the words Adonai in common practice and Jose in legal 
discussions were such words. The word translated into “dyn- 
amis” in Greek and on to “Power” in our English text, was un- 
doubtedly the true Name instead of the pseudonym. It is notable 
that “Power” in this sense is not used elsewhere in the New Test- 
ament; also, that the word Jehovah does not occur in the New 
Testament. Mark, the source of this story, was a Jew, and had 
the Jewish feeling towards the ineffable Name. In the Gemara to 
the Mishna last quoted, it is explained “It was forbidden to ex- 
press the name Jehovah in any case whatever, except in that of 
the High Priest in his worshipping on the Day of Atonement; and 
even then when the people heard this expression they used to fall 
upon their faces.” 


‘Talmud, (Gemara to Mishna VI, Chap. VII, Sanhedrin) states 
the law thus: “The rabbis taught: there is no difference if one 
hears it from the blasphemer himself or from the witness who 
heard it from the blasphemer— he must rend his garments.” 
Numerous instances of rent garments expressing great emotion 
occur throughout the Old Testament. In this instance, however, 
the high priest was fulfilling a legal formula. 


THE ARREST AND THE INQUISITION 227 


had made himself liable to death, the punishment 
provided by the law for the offense. The object of 
the gathering was gained; the charge to be presented 
to the Sanhedrin was ready. They waited only for 
the morning to bring him to formal trial before the 
great court of the Jews upon the charge of blas- 
phemy. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


Tue TrIAL BEFORE THE SANHEDRIN AND THE 
ConvICTION. 


For the preliminary investigation at the hands of 
Caiaphas and his friends, the gospel writers had two 
possible sources of information. By one account 
John, one of Jesus’ most intimate followers, was 
present. He and Peter had followed at a distance 
while Jesus was being brought from Gethsemane to 
the palace of Caiaphas, and afterwards had come in- 
to the building itself. John, according to this account, 
was an acquaintance of the High Priest, and on suf- 
ficiently intimate terms to be admitted to the house. 
Here he would have heard the entire proceeding 
which he would have reported later to the others of 
the Twelve. Peter also, waiting near-by in the court 
of the great house, might have been near enough to 
hear the most of the proceedings. Two other men, 
Nicodemus and Joseph, who later became well-known 
members of the Christian community, were members 
of the Sanhedrin, and were probably called to this 
night gathering. They, too, no doubt later revealed 
to their Christian associates the details of what took 
place during this fateful night. But of the proceed- 
ings in the formal and legal trial which took place in 
the council house’ on the temple mount the next 

‘For the location of the council house, see the discussion in 
Schuerer 23, III 4. 

[228] 


THe Traut Berore THE SANHEDRIN 229 


morning they had no information. To this house none 
of the Messianists had entrance and besides it was 
no longer safe for them to follow that closely; and it 
is entirely possible that both Joseph and Nicodemus, 
fully advised of what was going to take place, know- 
ing that their contrary vote would be useless and 
would subject them to danger, and yet being out of 
sympathy with the proceeding and unwilling to vote 
to convict him, absented themselves from the trial 
entirely. The details of all the various legal pro- 
ceedings with which the few remaining hours of the 
life of Jesus were enmeshed are accordingly known 
to us only in very sketchy, incomplete form. The 
men who reported these proceedings, the men who 
wrote about them, even the men who became inter- 
ested in them, were for the most part entirely igno- 
rant of legal procedure, as well as without access to 
the detailed facts. The legal technicalities govern- 
ing such procedure were incomprehensible to them 
as well as of little interest to them, even if they had 
known them, and it is not to be expected that they 
could be accurately reported. But the essential facts 
are clearly and explicitly stated, and some of the 
lacking details can be supplied by inference from the 
known procedure in the Jewish and Roman courts, 
and the operation of human nature in all times. 
This daylight trial was an official trial, conducted 
before the Great Sanhedrin of seventy-one members, 


*Talmud, Sanhedrin, Chap. IV, Mishna I. “In the matter of 
a false prophet, or a high priest, if they have to be judged for 


230 JESUS THE Man 


in accordance with the forms of the Jewish law gov- 
erning procedure. Such a trial could not be held 
during the night, but, in order to add speed to the 
proceedings, and have the death of Jesus accom- 
plished before his Galilean multitude could be in- 
formed about it and raise a tumult for his release, 
as well as to avoid the ceremonial difficulties in- 
volved in carrying the matter over the Sabbath, the 
Sanhedrin was called together as early as it was day. 
The proceedings in this court were brief. The 
charge was blasphemy and the testimony supporting 
it was beyond contradiction, as the witnesses were 
the High Priest and many members of the Council 
themselves. The procedure was simple and the time 
involved was only such time as was necessary to ful- 
fill the required forms and to take a vote upon the 
verdict. This could be only one thing,—that he was 
guilty. This they could not legally do upon this 
day as their laws required that one accused might 
be acquitted on the same day as his trial, but where 
he was not acquitted the court must be adjourned be- 
fore night and the vote taken on the next day.’ 


a crime which may bring capital pusishment, a court of seventy- 
one judges is needed.” We have already seen the Pharisees ap- 
plying the legal test to him as a false prophet in Perea before 
Caesarea Philippi. Blasphemy was punishable by death. See 
Leviticus 24:16. 


*Talmud, Sanhedrin, Chap. IV, Mishna I: “In the latter 
(criminal cases) the decision may be rendered on the same day 
to free him, but not to condemn him until the next day; and 
therefore, cases of capital punishment must not be begun on the 
eve of Sabbath or a legal holiday.” This was now Friday morn- 
ing, the eve of the Sabbath: so this provision also was ignored, 


THE CoNVICTION 231 


Their emergency was great, however, and they 
failed to observe this limitation. 

However, now that they had convicted him and 
found him worthy of death, another step was neces- 
sary. This step was outside of their control. Under 
the gradual tightening of the Roman authority over 
their nation, the power to inflict the death penalty, 
even for crime, had been taken from the Jewish 
court into the hands of the Roman procurator. The 
Jewish court could indeed try and condemn, but it 
could not execute. So perhaps for this reason they 
ignored the time limitations which they might have 
observed had they had the power to execute their 
own decrees, and as speedily as possible they rose 
in a body and brought Jesus before the Roman pro- 
curator to ask for the ratification of their judgment.’ 
Now for the first time they bound him, an indication 
of his new legal status, as a convicted man.” 


*Mark 15:1; Matthew 27:1-2. Luke 22:66, 23:1. In 22:67-71, 
Luke transfers into the trial proper the proceedings which Mark 
and Matthew place in the preliminary investigation, all mention 
of which investigation he omits. 


‘Not a strict legal conclusion, but the binding clearly indicates 
a change of status. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


THe Hearinc anp AcquitraL Brerore Pirate—THE 
Herarinc Berore Herop—THE CoNnDEMNATION 


The Roman authority at that time was exercised 
in Judea, Samaria and Idumea by Pontius Pilate, 
who had then been procurator for about six years. 
He was a competent but severe administrator, who 
in his dealings with his subjects, the most refractory 
and uncontrollable of all the subjects of the emperor, 
was stern and hard to the point of cruelty. He had 
no respect for the religious prejudices of the Jews, 
and was contemptuous in his disregard of their de- 
sires and demands. By this time the antagonism be- 
tween himself and the Jewish authorities, which 
later led him into difficulties that caused his deposi- 
tion and exile to a little town in Gaul, was already 
well-developed. 

To this man the crowd of Jewish councilmen pro- 
ceeded with their condemned victim in their midst, 
from the council-house to the Praetorium, probably 
the castle of Antonia,’ where Pilate was staying dur- 

"His capital was at Caesarea. He apparently found Jerusa- 
lem disagreeable and came only upon special occasions. Some 
students think that when in Jerusalem he lived at the old palace 
of the Maccabees at the west end of the bridge crossing the 
Tyropoeon, (the great chasm on the west separating the temple 
from the city) but his relation to his Jerusalem subjects was 


such as to make it decidedly safer for him in the castle. The 
Greek word used is the equivalent of the Latin Practorium of 


[232] 


THe Hrarinc BErorE PmatTE 233 


ing his visit to the capital of the Jews. The distance 
was short, only a few hundred feet. It was the day 
before the feast of the Passover, at a time when they 
must remain ceremonially clean according to the 
law of Moses, in order that they might be permitted 
to partake of this ceremonial feast. Accordingly 
when they came to the house of the foreign governor, 
they remained without, and asked that he come out 
to them. They presented to Pilate their judgment 
of condemnation against Jesus and asked that it 
might be ratified and Jesus put to death. ‘* What is 
the accusation against him?’’ asked Pilate. This re- 
quest for the details of the matter was apparently 
unusual; Pilate was probably accustomed to approve 
such sentences as a matter of form without looking 
too carefully into them. The response of the Jews 
was colored with surprise: ‘‘If this man were not 
an evildoer,’’ they replied, ‘‘we would not have 
brought him to you.’’ ‘‘Take him yourselves then 
and judge him according to your own law,’’ said Pi- 
late. The Jews replied ‘‘It is unlawful for us to put 
any man to death.’” 


which it is a transliteration. This word meant a structure at 
Rome, the quarters of the Praetorian guard, much more nearly 
equivalent to the Castle of Antonia at Jerusalem than to any 
palace. 


"This entire paragraph is based entirely upon John (18 :28-32), 
and carries with it the inference (not clearly stated anywhere) 
that the priests proceeded first to secure action upon their own 
sentence. The first question of Pilate and the answer of the 
priests indicate that Pilate already had something before him, 
a request for definite action, when he came out. Were this not 


234 JESUS THE MANn 


Nevertheless, to Pilate, since it was clearly neces- 
sary, they now presented their accusation. The 
Jewish leaders, knowing Pilate’s antipathy towards 
themselves and his contempt for their religious laws, 
were unwilling to risk their case upon the ground 
upon which they had convicted him. They saw that 
for some reason Pilate was in an unaccommodating 
mood, and that they probably could not prevail upon 
him without presenting to him a real crime against 
the Roman law. So they began to accuse him on 
this basis, saying, ‘‘We found this man perverting 
our nation and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar 
and saying he himself is an anointed king.’” 


These charges, substantiated, would really be vio- 
lations of the Roman law, and Pilate examined into 
the truth of the statement. Up until this time he 


true his opening inquiry would have been “What do you desire?’ 
He knew what they desired,—confirmation of a sentence and exe- 
cution of one condemned by them. This episode can be eliminated 
entirely without affecting succeeding events, as the blasphemy 
charge and even the trial before the Sanhedrin is not again re 
ferred to in any of the gospels. It is retained here as the logical 
and probable link between the action of the Sanhedrin and the 
Roman hearing. The whole proceeding before Pilate and Herod, 
however, can be accounted for upon the supposition that the change 
of purpose took place in the Sanhedrin trial itself; that the 
Jewish councillors recognized then the impossibility of securing 
the death of Jesus upon any charge based solely upon the Jewish 
religious law and decided to proceed from the first before Pilate 
by charging him with crimes against the Roman laws. The John 
story seems the more probable and is inserted here for that 
reason, even in the face of John’s clearly demonstrated historical 
inaccuracy almost everywhere else. 


3Luke 23:2-5. 


Tue Herarine Berore PILATE 20 


had paid little or no attention to the prisoner. In- 
asmuch as the proceeding was merely a request for 
a ratification of a sentence already passed and was 
not a formal trial, he did not follow the process of 
calling witnesses and taking testimony. He merely 
went back inside the praetorium, had Jesus brought 
to him, and asked him about the matter. 

Of those charges mentioned, the most important 
considering the state of the Jewish mind, was the 
charge that Jesus claimed to be ‘‘an anointed king.’’ 
No Roman governor could afford to overlook any 
one who by claiming to be a king might arouse this 
nation into rebellion. ‘‘Are you the king of the 
Jews?’” he asked the man who now stood before 
him. Jesus had not heard the discussion between 
the elders of the Jews and Pilate. He wondered at 
the source of this inquiry. Was this another inci- 
dent where his Messiahship had been divinely re- 
vealed to another? ‘‘Sayest thou this of thyself?’’ 
he asked, ‘‘or did others tell it to you concerning 
me?’’ Pilate answered, ‘‘Am I a Jew? Your own 
nation and the chief priests delivered you to me. 
What have you done?”’ Jesus said, ‘‘ You say truly, 
I am king, but my Kingdom is not of this world. If 
my Kingdom were of this world then my servants 
would fight, that I should not be delivered to the 
rulers; but my Kingdom is not of this world.’’ 

Pilate, experienced in events and men, as he 


‘Matthew 27:11; Mark 15:2; Luke 23:3; John 18:33-38. 


236 JESUS THE MAN 


looked upon the countenance of the helpless man 
before him, realized that he was not a leader of any 
armed rebellion. His face and his language alike 
proclaimed what he was,—a religious enthusiast. 
The antagonism of the Jewish rulers, despite all 
their legal accusations, was evidently based on 
some religious difference. Pilate went back to the 
waiting crowd. ‘‘I find no fault in this man,’’ he 
said.” The confirmation of their death sentence was 
refused. 

Ordinarily this might have closed the matter 
but this time the Jewish rulerg were insistent. 
They began to modify and make more specific their 
charges. ‘‘He stirs up the people, teaching 
throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee even 
unto this very place.”’ 

Pilate was not influenced by this new statement. 
The matter was closed so far as he was concerned. 
But when he heard them mention Galilee, he in- 
quired whether he was a Galilean. Galilee was out- 
side hig jurisdiction and this man would then be- 
come a subject of Herod, and responsible to Herod 
for whatever he had done.’ 

Just at this time, there was serious friction he- 


SLuke 23:4; John 18:38. 


‘Matthew 27:12-14; Mark 15:3-5; Luke 23:5. Matthew 
states that Jesus answered nothing, either to the accusations of 
the priests or to Pilate. Mark’s statement that “Jesus no more 
answered anything” leaves room for the conversation with Pilate 
described by John. 


"Luke 23: 6-12. 


Tue Hearinc Berore PIAtTEe 208 


tween Herod and Pilate.” Herod, it is true, was in 
Jerusalem at this time, brought there by the great 
Jewish feast, of which he as a Jew partook, but the 
relation existing between him and the Roman gov- 
ernor was hostile. Perhaps this had grown out 
of an incident mentioned in the gospels; Pilate at a 
previous feast had slain a number of Galileans in 
the midst of their sacrifices, a procedure which no 
doubt aroused deep resentment upon the part of 
Herod, who considered it an affront to him as their 
ruler. The situation between the two authorities at 
that time was one which would naturally breed dis- 
cord. Jerusalem, under the control of Pilate, was 
the religious capital of a large percentage of Herod’s 
subjects, who, in large numbers, went many times 
during the year to this city and were prone to dis- 
turbance and riot. This furnished a constant possi- 
bility of conflicts with the authority of Pilate and 
consequent quarrels over jurisdiction, as Herod 
claimed authority over his own subjects and denied 
Pilate’s right to put them to death. 

It occurred to Pilate that this was an opportun- 
ity to placate Herod. This Galilean, whom he now 
believed to be harmless and the victim of the relig- 
ious prejudice of the priests, he would send to 
Herod and permit him to handle the matter him- 
self. This would both relieve Pilate of trouble with 
the insistent priests and please his neighbor ruler 


*Luke 23:12. *Luke 13:1. 


238 JESUS THE Man 


by the deference thus shown to his authority over 
his subjects. He could reasonably assume that 
Herod, who had shown himself jealous of the safety 
of his subjects when in Jerusalem, would take care 
to protect this man from the unjustified attempt 
upon his life by the Jerusalem authorities. 

This procedure did not require much time. Pi- 
late, naturally impatient, was unsympathetic with 
the purposes of these priests, and had acted 
promptly with little deliberation. Their prisoner 
again in their midst, the crowd speedily passed over 
the bridge and through the city to its northwestern 
corner, where in an ancient palace, acquired by 
Herod the Great, his children now lived when they 
visited Jerusalem. 

It was now open day and none of Jesus’ disciples 
dared to follow him to this place; consequently we 
are again at a loss as to the details of the proceed- 
ings here. Surrounded by enemies only, in the 
midst of a crowd all of whom hated him and eagerly 
sought for his death, Jesus went before his legal 
prince. 

The arrival of this man before him gave Herod 
much satisfaction. Besides the personal recogni- 
tion of his authority contained in Pilate’s action, 
which was in itself pleasing and the cause of the 
removal of the friction which had heretofore exist- 
ed between the two men, he now had before him 
the man for whom he had been seeking for months 
throughout his territory. Here was the trouble- 


Tse Hrarine Berore PATE 239 


maker who had set his entire realm by the ears. He 
had for some time been determined upon the death 
of this man” and this gave him the opportunity 
which he desired. Jesus was fully aware of this 
determination and to the persistent inquiry and in- 
terrogations by means of which Herod sought more 
light upon his teachings and the movement which 
he had aroused, he answered nothing. Though 
Herod’s determination needed no support, it was 
fortified by the accusations of the chief priests and 
scribes who stood before him and vehemently ac- 
cused Jesus. 

The proceedings before Herod did not constitute 
a trial. The Herods were all careless of human life 
and for the death of a trouble-maker which had al- 
ready been definitely determined, only the oppor- 
tunity was necessary. But after all, even though 
Jesus was Herod’s subject and in his possession, 
both were still outside Herod’s dominion, within 
the jurisdiction of another power, which conse- 
quently retained the authority to inflict the death 
punishment. Herod might find his subject guilty 
of crime, but for him to attempt to exercise in Je- 
rusalem the complete authority involved in perform- 
ing an execution would have been as great an af- 
front to Pilate as Pilate’s complete assumption of 
authority over Herod’s subjects had been to Herod. 
The courtesy extended to him by Pilate he now re- 
turned to Pilate. He sent Jesus back to Pilate with 


“wTuke 13:31; Mark 3:6, 


240 JESUS THE MAN 


the information that he considered him worthy of 
death.” Before his departure on the journey back 
across the city, Herod’s soldiers, knowing his con- 
demnation and perhaps influenced by the trouble 
to which he had put them in avoiding their search 
for him through Galilee, expressed their contempt 
of him and his vaulting claims by clothing him in 
gorgeous raiment, the purple of royalty, and cover- 
ing him with abuse arid mockery. 


Pilate was not pleased when the problem which 
he had thought himself rid of came so speedily back 


“Luke’s statement (23:11) is scarcely broad enough to sup- 
port this statement if taken without confirmatory evidence. 
Pilate’s statement concerning Herod’s decision (v. 15) directly 
contradicts it. But the acts of Herod and his soldiers toward 
Jesus (v. 11) were not such as any potentate would perform or 
permit to be performed towards a subject whom. he found guiltless. 
They are rather acts of mockery towards one found guilty. And 
several facts are conclusive evidence that Herod was jointly re- 
sponsible with Pilate for Jesus’ death. Peter (Acts 4:27) places 
Herod first, charging “Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the gentiles 
and the people of Israel” with that which had been done. Igna- 
tius (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 1:5) states specifically “He 
was also truly crucified by Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tet- 
rarch, being nailed for us in the flesh.”” The fragment of the 
apocryphal “Gospel according to Peter”, little if any later in 
origin than Ignatius, places the entire responsibility upon Herod, 
Furthermore, it could scarcely have been otherwise. The Jeru- 
salem episode had made Jesus not less dangerous to Herod’s 
peace, but more so. If Herod was seeking him to kill him be- 
fore his attempt upon the temple, he would now be seeking him 
with the same purpose but with double earnestness. The state- 
ment of Pilate to the crowd “No, nor yet Herod, for he sent him 
back to us” is obviously an attempt to put a color on Herod’s 
act which would be useful to Pilate’s shrewd intent to avoid ful- 
fillment of Herod’s purpose. There is nothing in our knowledge 
of Pilate which would indicate that it is impossible that he would 
distort the facts if such distortion would serve his purpose. 


THE CONDEMNATION 241. 


to him. He had seen through the hollowness of the 
charges brought by the priests before him and had 
recognized the matter for what it was, a quarrel 
over a religious question. He of course had not 
known of Herod’s previous trouble with Jesus and 
of the months-long search for him to put him to 
death. He had believed that by sending Jesus to 
Herod he had taken him out of the hands of the 
priests and placed him under the protection of his 
own ruler and that Herod, as he had objected to 
Pilate putting his subjects to death for disturbance 
in connection with their feasts, would be glad to 
prevent the priests from doing the same thing from 
similar cause. He was surprised and disappointed 
to find the whole matter back upon his hands with 
the added complication that Jesus was now con- 
demned by his own ruler. But Pilate was stubborn; 
he had decided that these priests ought not to be 
gratified by the death of this man and while he hesi- 
tated to give new affront to Herod, he sought some 
way to avoid the difficulty that had been created 
by Herod’s action. 

The procession composed of Jesus and his Jewish 
accusers in their two trips across the heart of the 
city had now gathered about them a crowd of the 
general population of Jerusalem, no doubt aug- 
mented by visitors for the Passover. Still attempt- 
ing to avoid the ceremonial uncleanness incident to 
entering a heathen habitation on this Day of Prep- 
aration, the Jewish officials remained on the out- 


242 JESUS THE MANn 


side in the passage leading from the temple to the 
Praetorium. The soldiers of Herod, who had re- 
turned Jesus from Herod to Pilate, took him within 
the Praetorium. The presence of the multitude with 
the priests gave him a suggestion as to a way out 
of his difficulty. 

It was the custom with Pilate upon each feast day 
to gratify the populace by releasing to them some 
prisoner whom they demanded.” Under the condi- 
tions which existed in Jerusalem, with a foreign ruler 
controlling a population of alien instinct which hated 
him profoundly, there were a great many political 
prisoners, and this custom of Pilate’s was no doubt 
the means of allaying much disturbance by the satis- 
faction which would come from the release of some 
loved leader, 

The priests in their charge against Jesus had com- 
plained that he perverted the people. The inference 
then was immediate, that if the people had their way 
Jesus would not be under arrest, and if they could 
be consulted, would demand that he be released. Of 
course this custom was known to Herod, and to 
Herod’s request for the death of Jesus it would be 
a perfectly sound reply that the people had demand- 
ed him and that it was necessary for Pilate to re- 
lease to them whomsoever they demanded. 

The idea was natural and reasonable. He had no 
reason to suspect that it would fail to operate. In- 


"Matthew 27:15-25; Mark 15:6-15; Luke 23:18-25; John 
18 : 39-40. 


THE CoNDEMNATION 243 


deed, anyone, under the existing circumstances, 
would have expected it to work perfectly. If Jesus 
was a sufficiently popular leader to arouse the peo- 
ple into a tumult that had brought him into conflict 
with the authorities of his nation, certainly he would 
be popular enough with the populace for them to de- 
mand his release in order to save his life. Here he 
seemed to have an opportunity to do three things: to 
save an innocent man, to please his troublesome Je- 
rusalem crowd, and to displease the Jewish priests 
and national leaders, for whom he had only dislike 
and contempt. 

Accordingly he came out to the crowd and spoke 
to them with great shrewdness and subtlety, empha- 
sizing to the multitude in his address to their rulers 
the reason alleged by the authorities in seeking the 
death of Jesus. ‘‘ You brought me this man as one 
that perverts the people. Now I have examined him 
and found no fault in him in the things in which you 
accuse him, nor does Herod, for he has sent him 
back to me. He has done nothing worthy of death. 
Therefore I shall scourge him and release him.’’ 

To his astonishment, this proposal met with no 
welcome whatsoever among the crowd. Pilate did 
not know that this was not the multitude that had 
been under the influence of Jesus. The crowd that 
were before him were not the Galilean Messianists 
or the limited number of Jerusalemites who had be- 
lieved on Jesus in the few hours when he spoke in the 
temple. They probably knew almost as little about 


244 JESUS THE Man 


Jesus as did Pilate himself, further than that he had 
come into Jerusalem at the head of a crowd of Gali- 
leans, had committed violence on their merchants and 
bankers, had driven the lawful authorities out of the 
temple and taken possession of it. Their attitude to- 
wards Jesus was practically as hostile as that of the 
priests themselves and for much the same reason. 
Had Pilate, as he thought, been appealing to the mul. 
titude which Jesus had led, his proposal would have 
met with instant and joyous response, and he would 
have solved his problem. As it was, it fell upon ears 
utterly unresponsive, upon men who not only cared 
nothing whatsoever for Jesus and rather wished him 
ul, but who also had a favorite of their own whose 
release they were that day seeking. In Pilate’s 
prison at that time was a man who had been the lead- 
er in one of the popular tumults which were frequent 
in the city, and who in that tumult had committed 
murder. Evidently he was very popular among the 
Jerusalem multitude, for to Pilate’s astonishment 
the whole crowd began to shout, ‘* Away with this 
man and give us Barabbas.”’ 

Puzzled at this astonishing turn in affairs Pilate 
asked them ‘‘What then shall I do with the man 
whom you call the king of the Jews?’’ Perhaps 
they might demand him in addition to Barabbas, 
under which circumstances he would no doubt have 
released them both. But the priests, distributed 
among this crowd in large numbers, had added their 
own venom to the dislike of the mob. The merci- 


THr ConDEMNATION 245 


less cruelty which lurks in every mob came to the 
surface. The cry suggested by the priests was the 
response to Herod’s question: ‘‘Crucify him!’’ 
they said. 

Pilate was amazed at the contradictoriness of 
the situation. Here were the priests demanding the 
life of Jesus because he was leading the crowd astray. 
And behold here was the crowd demanding his death 
just as vociferously as the priests themselves. In 
bewilderment he demanded what the cause of this 
strange condition might be, ‘‘Why, what evil hath 
he done? I have found no cause of death in him. 
I will therefore chastise him and let him go.”’ 

There have never been any more violent and 
turbulent mobs than the Jerusalem mob of those 
days. Sudden and volcanic in its passion, violent 
in its action, stubborn and difficult to subdue, when 
it had become thoroughly aroused usually resisting 
to the point where many troops and much bloodshed 
were required to quiet it, no one who had had ex- 
perience with it would lightly stir it up. And 
this one was speedily becoming worked up into 
a passion. They disliked Jesus to begin with. 
They were offended because Pilate had attempt- 
ed to pawn him off on them as their one great 
annual gift in the place of their own beloved par- 
tisan. And now that they had indicated their pref- 
erence, it irritated them to see Pilate persisting 
in his refusal to recognize their desires. They be- 
gan to shout more vociferously and more violent- 


246 JESUS THE MAN 


ly ‘‘Crucify him! crucify him!’’ If they acted as 
they did on other recorded occasions, they began to 
throw dust in the air and to cast off their garments 
and to shout in their rage.” 

The interest which Pilate had taken in Jesus was 
not sufficient to cause him to undertake any great 
personal trouble in his behalf. So far as ordering 
the death himself, or himself ratifying the sentence 
of the Jewish council, he had refused to do it, and 
probably would have stood out against any pres- 
sure they might have seen fit to bring. If the mob 
had grown sufficiently unruly he would have done 
as he had frequently done before; he would have 
brought his troops upon the mob with clubs or weap- 
ons and even at the cost of many lives if necessary 
have compelled them to respect his will. But in 
this instance he had surrendered the jurisdiction 
of Jesus to Herod. He was at this time under ob- 
ligation to Herod to carry out the sentence which 
Herod had pronounced against him. He had mere- 
ly appealed to this multitude with the hope and 
expectation that it would demand from him a be- 
loved leader and give him a sufficient explanation 
to Herod for not carrying out his sentence. Now 
that the multitude had refused him he was unwill- 
ing to take any further responsibility in the matter. 
Let Herod’s sentence against his subject take its 
course. The responsibility was not his and he 
would not assume any further burden about it. 


“Acts 22:22, 23, 


THE CoNDEMNATION 247 


Pilate had lived among the Jews for a good many 
years and was familiar with the operations of the 
Jewish mind. He did not consider himself respon- 
sible in this matter and wanted them thoroughly to 
understand that he did not. He understood the 
Jewish mental habit which found it difficult to com- 
prehend abstractions and required vivid objective 
phenomena to impress upon them truths which to 
our modern mind would seem perfectly easy of com- 
prehension. He used a method which had been fre- 
quently employed by the prophets of the ancient 
Jews and which was no doubt common among the 
Jews of his own time, that of a symbolic represen- 
tation of the idea he desired to convey. He had 
water brought to him and before the multitude he 
washed his hands. This was not his sentence. ‘‘I 
am innocent of the blood of this righteous man.’’ 
Then he gave orders that Barabbas be released to 
the multitude, and that Jesus be sent to crucifixion. 


CHAPTER XX 


Tue CRUCIFIXION. 


The tragedy rushed quickly to its close. The 
soldiers took Jesus into their quarters to prepare 
him for his crucifixion. Apparently the cruelty 
which revealed itself in the treatment imposed upon 
him by Herod again appeared in the inner court of 
the Praetorium. Already he was clothed in purple 
which Herod had placed upon him in derision be- 
fore he had sent him back to Pilate. First he was 
subjected to the terrible scourge. Then to carry 
out the cruel jest the soldiers placed him upon an 
extemporaneous throne; some soldier who thought 
that his royal appearance was lacking without a 
crown, proceeded to plait one of thorny branches 
and thrust it upon his head; another placed a reed 
in his hand for a sceptre. Then they knelt before 
him in mock obedience, saying ‘‘Hail, king of the 
Jews!’’ following the obeisance with a blow to ex- 
press their contempt. 

Pilate saw this spectacle and was impressed with 
the pitifulness of it perhaps as well as with the 
bearing of Jesus himself, who through the whole 
heartless procedure maintained unbroken silence, 
and, relying upon his unshaken confidence in the 
value of his terrible experience as a fulfillment of 


"Matthew 27:26-30; Mark 15-19; John 19:1-16. 
[248] 


Tuer CRUCIFIXION 249 


the Messianic prophecies, probably even a compar- 
ative serenity of countenance. Pilate was seized 
anew with the hope that perhaps this multitude 
which had refused to demand that he free Jesus, 
if they could see him in his present condition, might 
take pity upon the man whom, he thought, thev 
once had followed as a leader; might demand his 
release and give Pilate an opportunity to grant it 
without offense to Herod. So he brought Jesus out 
before them, wearing the crown of thorns and the 
purple garment, with the terrible marks of the 
scourging and the abuse that he had just under- 
gone apparent. ‘‘Behold the man,’’ he cried. 

The spectacle was pitiful enough to have moved 
almost any other type of crowd. But cruel even 
under ordinary circumstances, this multitude was 
now filled with animosity and hatred. The piteous 
appearance of the man before them excited no pity 
but only an increased demand for his death. ‘‘Cru- 
eify him! crucify him!’’ they eried. 

To this ery of the mob the Jewish officials now 
added another and more personal appeal to Pilate. 
They observed how earnestly Pilate was seeking to 
find means to avoid carrying out the sentence 
against Jesus. ‘‘If you release this man,’’ they 
said, ‘‘you are no friend of Caesar’s. This man 
calls himself a king; Srey, one who makes himself 
a king opposes Caesar.’ 

This put an end to Pilate’s efforts. He not merely 
saw the uselessness of expecting anything from 


250 JESUS THE Man 


that crowd for the advantage of Jesus but at the 
same time realized that the political possibilities 
growing out of the situation might become perilous 
to himself. He returned Jesus to the hands of the 
soldiers. The time for jesting was over; Jesus’ 
cross was ready. They clothed him again in his 
own garments and took him away to the place of 
crucifixion.’ 


He left the Praetorium carrying his own cross ac- 
cording to the custom; but weakened by the effect 
of the terrible Roman scourging, and the abuse he 
had undergone, he was unable to support its weight. 
Unwilling to carry it themselves the soldiers seized 
upon a stranger from the country passing along 
the street and impressed him to carry the instru- 
ment of torture. As they passed through the 
streets of the city, great multitudes followed them. 
The proceeding had profoundly stirred the entire 
city, and by this time, about noon, the most of its 
inhabitants had attached themselves to the crowd to 
see the spectacle.’ 

Among this crowd were some women of the city, 
whose hearts were not so hard as those of the great 
mass about him and who, as they saw this young 
man passing to his death, wept and lamented him 
in the noisy fashion characteristic of the Jews. 
This wailing awoke again in Jesus the emotions 


*Matthew 27:31-32; Mark 15: 2021; Iuke 23:26; John 
ab aaah a by gs 


*T Kei 2h eed e. 


THE CRUCIFIXION Pray 


that had filled him when from the temple he looked 
out over the city and saw coming upon it the doom 
which he believed to be inevitable. Even in the 
hour of death he was still possessed by his sub- 
lime conception of the fast approaching end of the 
world. Turning to the women he said ‘‘ Daughters 
of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for your- 
selves and for your children. For behold the days 
are coming in which they shall say, ‘Blessed are the 
barren and the wombs that never bore and the 
breasts that never gave suck!’ Then shall they begin 
to say to the mountains ‘Fall on us’ and to the hills 
“Cover us.’ For if they do these things in the green 
tree, what shall be done in the dry?’’ 

With him went two other condemned men, con- 
demned perhaps for participation in the same out- 
break for which Barabbas had been arrested. 

The world has long desired to identify the place 
to which they led these three. From the nature of the 
topography of Jerusalem and its environs, it must 
have been somewhere along the ridge to the north 
of the city. The name of the place, in Hebrew Gol- 
gotha, in Latin Calvary, means ‘‘the place of a 
skull’’ and with the assumption that this indicated 
some hill shaped like a skull, various places have 
been pointed out by different writers as the probable 
locality. There is no definiteness about any of these 
Opinions, however, and we only know they took them 
to some place near Jerusalem and there crucified 
them. 


252 Jesus toe Man 


The three were crucified near together, the cross 
of Jesus between the other two.’ According to the 
custom of placing above the head of the malefactor 
the accusation of crime for which he was being pun- 
ished, the charge which Pilate had dictated was 
placed upon the cross. The language of his accu- 
sation was ‘‘ Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews.”’ 
Carrying as it did the accusation of no crime, it ex- 
pressed with subtle irony the contempt of Pilate for 
the people he governed, as well as for the priests 
who he thought had sought the blood of this man for 
no legal cause. The priests appreciated the rebuke 
contained in it and sent to him to ask that it be 
changed to read ‘‘He said, ‘I am King of the 
Jews’,’’? which would indicate that he had commit- 
ted the crime of treason. But this matter was not 
complicated; it was entirely within Pilate’s author- 
ity, and he refused to accede to the wishes of the 
priests. ‘‘What I have written I have written,’’ he 
replied. 

As a measure of mercy, before the actual cruci- 
fixion began the doomed men were offered a drink 
of wine mingled with a drug which had a narcotie 
effect. This Jesus refused. He was not willing to 
blunt his faculties for the experience he was sure 
he was about to meet. He expected to go directly 
into the heavens. 


The doomed men were stripped of their clothing 


*Matthew 27: 35-38; Mark 15: 24-27; Luke 23:33, 38; John 
19 : 18-22. 


THE CRUCIFIXION 203 


before they were nailed to the cross. The custom 
gave the garments to the soldiers who performed 
the execution; Jesus’ garments were divided into 
four parts, the ownership of the woven inner gar- 
ment being determined by the casting of lots. Then 
the soldiers sat down by the crosses to watch their 
victims die. 

The merciless cruelty of the priests who had ac- 
complished his death followed him even to the last 
hour. The multitudes that passed by jeered at him, 
saying ‘‘If thou art the son of God come down from 
the cross;’’ the chief priests likewise mocked him, 
saying, ‘‘He is the king of Israel, let him now come 
down from the cross, and we will believe on him; 
he trusteth in God, let God deliver him now if he de- 
sireth him.’” 

Likewise of the two insurrectionists who were 
crucified with him, one jeered at him saying, °° Art 
thou not the Anointed One? save thyself and us.”’ 
But one of them, evidently familiar with the teach- 
ing of Jesus and perhaps a believer in him, said 
‘‘ Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy 
Kingdom.’’ 

Even yet the confidence in his mission and in the 
early coming of the Kingdom was unshaken. To the 
man who hung dying with him he answered, ‘‘ Verily 
I say unto thee, to-day thou shalt be with me in Para- 
dise.’? The death which now confronted him im- 
mediately with inevitable certainty was only the 


‘Matthew 27: 39-44; Mark 15: 29-32; Luke 23: 35-43. 


254 JESUS THE Man 


gate through which he should pass into the heavens 
and to the joyous state of the blessed from whence 
he would speedily return bringing the Kingdom of 
Heaven. 

The disciples of Jesus were all thoroughly dis- 
persed. The eleven were in hiding in the city where 
they were now being sought by the chief priests be- 
cause of a rumor that was circulated throughout the 
city that they were attempting to burn the temple. 
The multitude of his Galileans were forever scat- 
tered. Buta few of the women, less suspected, and 
consequently in less personal danger, watched the 
whole proceeding from afar.’ 


The satisfaction of the Jerusalemites was sudden- 
ly changed to fear, for an eclipse now covered the 
face of the sun and darkness enshrouded the city. 
It was so intense that many were unable to find 
their way about the streets without falling, others 
earried lanterns. This darkness continued until 
three o’clock when the sun again came out, much to 


‘John 24:27 cannot be historical; it contradicts not merely 
the language of the synoptists, who state that the women watched 
from afar (Matthew 27:55, 56; Mark 15:40, 41; Luke 23: 49) 
but it is psychologically so improbable as almost to be impossible 
that John and these timid women could have been crowded in 
among the soldiers and the hostile Jewish rulers, practically con- 
versing with him. The Gospel according to Peter even if apoc- 
ryphal, is more probable in this instance. It states that Peter 
“and my companions was grieved; and being wounded in mind 
we hid ourselves: for we were being sought for by them as mal- 
efactors and as wishing to set fire to the temple.” This great 
soul went to his end spiritually alone, not as Socrates surround- 
ed by loving friends and disciples, but amid the jeers and abuses 
of his enemies. 


THE CRUCIFIXION 255 


the relief of those who had begun to fear the mean- 
ing of this phenomenon, occurring simultaneously 
with the crucifixion of the man who had claimed to 
be the Son of God. 

About three o’clock Jesus, who had maintained his 
silence throughout these hours of torture, cried out 
in the words of the psalmist, ‘‘ My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?’” No doubt with the pass- 
ing of his strength and the gradual diminution of 
consciousness the keen sense of the nearness of God 
which he had continually kept with him and which 
had been his sustaining support through the whole 
terrible experience, began to lose its power. The 
haziness of approaching death was upon him, and 
he felt that he was indeed forsaken. 

To one who knew not the language, the Aramaic 
words he uttered bore a decided resemblance to a 
ery for Elijah. Even the foreign soldiers who 
served Pilate had become familiar with the name and 
meaning of Elijah, and one soldier who heard the 
ery construed it to be a call for Elijah. He knew the 
nature of the charges against Jesus and in curiosi- 
ty began to wonder what this could mean. He saw the 
fainting condition of the dying man; he ran and sat- 
urated a sponge with sour wine, placed it upon a 
reed, and put it up to his lips with the hope that it 


™atthew 27:46; Mark 15: 34. The words are quoted from 
Paras. L: 


8As they come to us through the Greek they are not exact 
transliteration of the Hebrew. 


256 JEsus THE Man 


might refresh him and sustain him for a while. 
‘Let be,’’ he said, ‘‘let us see whether Elijah comes 
to take him down.’’ 

But it was of no avail. The end was come. Jesus 
uttered a loud ery’ and gave up the ghost.” 


*The words given by Luke (28:46) and John (19:30) are 
entirely different and both contradict both Mark and Matthew 
and all probability. 


~The strictly human life of Jesus necessarily ends with his 
death. The story of the resurrection, the experiences of the 
Twelve, the development of the Christian group in Jerusalem and 
elsewhere and the genesis of the conviction that the man who was 
the central figure of this striking episode could be none other 
than God himself, require another study and are not properly a 
part of this book. 


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